Questioning the role of the frontopolar cortex in multi-component behavior – a TMS/EEG study

Abstract

Cognitive control is central to many every day situations. There, we usually have to combine different actions to achieve a task goal. Several lines of research indicated that areas in the prefrontal cortex determine cognitive control in situations requiring multi-component behavior. One of this is the frontopolar cortex (FPC). However, direct non-correlative evidence for this notion is widely lacking. In the current study we test the importance of the FPC for the implementation of action cascading processes in a TMS/EEG study. The data, however, clearly show that the FPC does not modulate behavioral or neurophysiological parameters reflecting action cascading, which is in contrast to the findings of dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. The results are supported by a Bayesian analysis of the data. The results suggest that a possible role of the FPC in multi-component behavior needs to be refined. At least in situations, where multi-component behavior is achieved by stopping and switching processes and does not impose high demands on working memory processes the FPC seems to play no role in the implementation of this major cognitive control function.

When repetitive mental sets increase cognitive flexibility in adolescent obsessive–compulsive disorder

“…Additional (indirect) evidence that inhibitory control mechanisms may drive the observed effects comes from the finding that there were no modulations in the N2 ERP component on target stimuli reflecting the behavioral data. The N2 likely reflects conflict monitoring processes (Beste, Saft, Andrich, Gold, & Falkenstein, ; Donkers & Van Boxtel, ; Folstein & Van Petten, ; Larson, Clayson, & Clawson, ) and these can play a role in backward inhibition (Gohil et al., ; Zhang, Stock, Rzepus, & Beste, ; Zhang, Stock, & Beste, ; Zhang, Stock, Fischer et al., ). Yet, a conflict in the last ( n th) trial of a BI triplet is only possible to emerge, if the irrelevant n −1 task set was still active.…”

“…This is because these regions play a central role in inhibitory control processes (Aron, Monsell, Sahakian, & Robbins, ; Bodmer & Beste, ; Chmielewski, Mückschel, Ziemssen, & Beste, ; Dippel & Beste, ; Stock, Popescu, Neuhaus, & Beste, ) and have been shown to underlie modulations in perceptual categorization processes during cognitive flexibility in OCD (Wolff, Buse et al., ). Yet, modulations in BI can also be due to changes in response and conflict monitoring mechanisms in medial frontal structures that are reflected by the N2 ERP component (Gohil, Dippel, & Beste, ; Zhang, Stock, & Beste, ; Zhang, Stock, Fischer et al., ). However, even though these processes are often considered to be relevant during cognitive flexibility (Gajewski, Kleinsorge, & Falkenstein, ; Gehring, Bryck, Jonides, Albin, & Badre, ; Karayanidis, Coltheart, Michie, & Murphy, ), they may not be modulated, because a conflict cannot appear when the irrelevant task set has been sufficiently inhibited.…”

Frontal Lobe Hemodynamic Responses to Painful Stimulation: A Potential Brain Marker of Nociception

“…The region is located inferior to Brodmann 9 (superior frontal cortex) and Brodmann 11 (the anterior extension of oribitofrontal cortex). BA 10, also known as the anterior prefrontal cortex, frontopolar prefrontal cortex or rostral prefrontal cortex, is an association cortex is involved in a wide variety of functions including risk and decision making [22], odor evaluation, reward and conflict/threats [23, 24], pain [10], and working memory [25, 26]. While arousal is probably not involved in the response, or only partially contributory in the awake patients and even in the sedated patients, it is unlikely to be so in the fully anesthetized patients (see Caveats below).…”

Modulations of cognitive flexibility in obsessive compulsive disorder reflect dysfunctions of perceptual categorization

“…However, it is also possible that modulations of cognitive flexibility in OCD are not due to response selection problems, but occur much earlier in the processing cascade. For task switching and cognitive flexibility processes, it is assumed that inhibitory control processes are important (Gohil, Dippel, & Beste, ; Zhang, Stock, & Beste, ; Zhang, Stock, Fischer, & Beste, ) because these are used to inhibit interferences arising from previous tasks (Allport & Wylie, ). Dysfunctions in inhibitory control are a hallmark in OCD (Chamberlain & Menzies, ; Chamberlain & Sahakian, ; Menzies et al., , ; Morein‐Zamir, Fineberg, Robbins, & Sahakian, ).…”