Effects of a three-week executive control training on adaptation to task difficulty and emotional interference

Abstract

Intact executive functions are characterized by flexible adaptation to task requirements, while these effects are reduced in internalizing disorders. Furthermore, as executive functions play an important role in emotion regulation, deficits in executive functions may contribute to symptom generation in psychological disorders through increased emotional interference. Thus, the present study investigated transfer effects of a three-week executive control training on adaptation to task difficulty and emotional interference in healthy participants (n = 24) to further explore the training’s suitability for clinical application. To assess the adaptation to task difficulty, the proportion congruency effect on behavioral data (response times, error rates) and ERP measures (N2, CRN) was assessed in a flanker task with varying frequency of incompatible trials (25%, 75%). To quantify emotional interference, flanker stimuli were superimposed on neutral or negative pictures. Replicating previous results, the training increased interference control as indexed by decreased response times and errors rates, increased N2 amplitude and decreased CRN amplitude in incompatible trials after training. Proportion congruency effects were weaker than expected and not affected by the training intervention. The training lead to a shift in the time-point of emotional interference: before training negative pictures lead to a reduction in CRN amplitude, while after training this reduction was observed for the N2. This pattern illustrates that the training leads to a change in task processing mode from predominant response-related cognitive control to predominant stimulus-related cognitive control (N2), indicating a proactive processing mode.

Synergistic effects of transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation and inhibitory control training on electrophysiological performance in healthy adults

“…Furthermore, the signal-N2 latency was also shorter after the combined tVNS with ICT intervention in fronto-central and central regions, and this effect was not seen in the sham tVNS or sham ICT groups. This is consistent with the hypothesis that tVNS exerts a positive synergistic effect on IC enhancement, which, in turn, produces an accelerating effect of automatically generated response tendencies ( Grützmann et al, 2022 ). This has been corroborated by findings from Pihlaja et al (2020) who suggested that a change in the frontal N2 component is a neural marker of cognitive control.…”