Preparatory brain activity in dual-tasking

Neural Correlates of Aging-Related Differences in Pro-active Control in a Dual Task

“…According to current regression models, enhanced midline fronto-central negative potentials predicted improved performance of both T1 and T2 (Figure 4 and Supplementary Table 3). This observation provides evidence that in dual-task conditions, the CNV is associated with a pro-active facilitation of both the immediate and the deferred sub-task (Steinhauser and Steinhauser, 2018). In addition, basing on the data set analyzed here, Thönes et al (2018) have demonstrated that enhanced CNV is associated with superior T2 interference control at the response selection stage (i.e., with reduced dual-task costs).…”

“…Further, according to the observations of Steinhauser and Steinhauser (2018), enhanced frontal negative potentials in dualtask conditions are linked to a neural mechanism that defers the implementation of the task set of T2 until T1 execution is completed and represent an inhibition process that suppresses response sets that are conflicting with the immediate task (T1). It was therefore also hypothesized that an efficient proactive deferment (inhibition) of T2 would correspond to enhanced negative SCPs at frontal regions (Steinhauser and Steinhauser, 2018). Finally, the implementation of cognitive control and associated pre-activation of attention and memory networks was expected to induce bilateral fronto-parietal slow-wave patterns in the cue-S1 interval (Worringer et al, 2019).…”

“…With regard to the predominant involvement of the left hemisphere in verbal processing (Majerus et al, 2006(Majerus et al, , 2010 and of the right hemisphere in color discrimination (Sasaki et al, 2007;Barnett, 2008), it was also expected that negative SCPs would be lateralized to the left hemisphere for letter-first and to the right hemisphere for colorfirst sub-task (Rösler et al, 1995b,a;Brunia and van Boxtel, 2004). Further, according to the observations of Steinhauser and Steinhauser (2018), enhanced frontal negative potentials in dualtask conditions are linked to a neural mechanism that defers the implementation of the task set of T2 until T1 execution is completed and represent an inhibition process that suppresses response sets that are conflicting with the immediate task (T1). It was therefore also hypothesized that an efficient proactive deferment (inhibition) of T2 would correspond to enhanced negative SCPs at frontal regions (Steinhauser and Steinhauser, 2018).…”

“…So far, the PRP paradigm has been mainly employed to study the sources of dual-task costs due to sub-task overlap ( Pashler and Johnston, 1989 ). Despite indications that top-down cognitive control networks subserving both proactive and reactive adaptive strategies ( Braver, 2012 ) are critically involved in dual-task costs (e.g., Pashler and Johnston, 1989 ; Logan and Gordon, 2001 ; Tombu and Jolicśur, 2003 ; Worringer et al, 2019 , for review), the specific role of proactive neurocognitive mechanisms in preparing dual-task performance has only recently been focused on ( Steinhauser and Steinhauser, 2018 ). Addressing this question is of particular relevance for conditions with altered control or compromised cognitive reserve such as aging ( Karayanidis et al, 2011 ; Robertson, 2014 ; Gajewski et al, 2020a ).…”

“…Existing behavioral models posit that dual-task preparation can be organized either as a preparation limited only to sub-task T1, or as separate preparatory sets for the two consecutive sub-tasks, or as one superordinate dual-task set ( De Jong, 1995 ; Meyer and Kieras, 1997 ; Luria and Meiran, 2003 ). A study by Steinhauser and Steinhauser (2018) has provided original neurophysiologic evidence for a multi-level mode of dual-task preparation that not only activates T1, but also prepares a deferred mode for a fast and efficient T2 processing. With this regard, the performance indices of dual-task preparation used here aimed to assess the focused preparation of the first and the second sub-task in the temporally structured dual-task set.…”