Putative Tests of Frontal Lobe Function: A PET-Study of Brain Activation During Stroop's Test and Verbal Fluency

Abstract

Stroop's test and the Verbal Fluency test are commonly argued to be measures of the integrity of the prefrontal cortex. This assumption has only to some degree been con®rmed by lesion studies. In the present study, Positron Emission Tomography (PET) with H 2 15O was used to further validate Stroop's test and the Verbal Fluency as measures of frontal lobe function; both tests were implemented as activation paradigms during scanning of normal middleaged individuals. Stroop interference was found to activate the left anterior cingulate cortex, the supplementary motor cortex, thalamus, and the cerebellum. Although the prominent anterior cingulate activation is in the frontal lobe, it is not prefrontal. Verbal Fluency activated the left inferior frontal cortex and the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the supplementary motor cortex, the anterior cingulate cortex and the cerebellum. These results bring this latter test closer to being a speci®c test of prefrontal function.

Right-hemispheric cortical contributions to language ability in healthy adults

“…The DLPFC is described by Faw as a coordinating functional area; "dominant in directing attention, working memory, and willed action" (2003, p. 85) and its main function is thought to be response selection (Badre & Wagner, 2004). Activation in the left DLPFC has been observed previously during a verbal fluency paradigm (Ravnkilde, Videbech, Rosenberg, Gjedde, & Gade, 2002). A dissociation between the left and the right DLPFC has been observed previously related to attention during the conflict-evoking STROOP task.…”

Cognitive and neuroanatomical correlates of neuropsychiatric symptoms in Parkinson's disease: A systematic review

“…Also for this task, evidence from fMRI studies is helpful as an association between the anterior cingulate cortex and letter fluency performance has been repeatedly reported in healthy participants [125][126][127].…”

Activation of the caudal anterior cingulate cortex due to task‐related interference in an auditory Stroop paradigm

“…Thus, the increased activation of the lentiform nucleus in the ''incongruent phonetic > incongruent semantic'' condition might be due to this enhancement of inhibitory GABAergic action within the putamen [for a discussion of the complex relationship between inhibitory neural signaling and the BOLD signal, see Logothetis, 2008]. Enhanced neural metabolism in the Stroop task was also found in the thalamus using PET imaging [Ravnkilde et al, 2002] and is most likely related to the increased attentional demands during processing of incongruent information [Carter et al, 1995]. Furthermore, results from several studies suggest that activity in the thalamus is actually necessary for coping with interfering information, because patients with thalamic infarcts [Shim et al, 2008] and after thalamotomy [Schuurman et al, 2002] are indeed impaired in the Stroop task.…”