ObjectiveProcessing Speed, the ability to perceive and react fast to stimuli in the environment, has been shown to be impaired in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. However, it is unclear whether PS can be improved following targeted treatments for ADHD. Here we examined potential changes in PS following application of transcranial electric stimulation combined with cognitive training in children with ADHD. Specifically, we examined changes in PS in the presence of different conditions of mental fatigue.MethodsWe used a randomized double-blind (...) active-controlled crossover study of 19 unmedicated children with ADHD. Participants received either anodal transcranial direct current stimulation over the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex or transcranial random noise stimulation, while completing CT, and the administration order was counterbalanced. PS was assessed before and after treatment using the MOXO-CPT, which measures PS in the presence of various conditions of mental fatigue and cognitive load.ResultstRNS combined with CT yielded larger improvements in PS compared to tDCS combined with CT, mainly under condition of increased mental fatigue. Further improvements in PS were also seen in a 1-week follow up testing.ConclusionThis study provides initial support for the efficacy of tRNS combined with CT in improving PS in the presence of mental fatigue in pediatric ADHD. (shrink)

The past 25 years have witnessed an increasing awareness of the importance of cognitive control in the regulation of complex behavior. It now sits alongside attention, memory, language, and thinking as a distinct domain within cognitive psychology. At the same time it permeates each of these sibling domains. This introduction reviews recent work on cognitive control in an attempt to provide a context for the fundamental question addressed within this topic: Is cognitive control to be understood as resulting from the (...) interaction of multiple distinct control processes, or are the phenomena of cognitive control emergent? (shrink)

The ventrolateral prefrontal cortex plays a pivotal role in cognitive reappraisal. Previous studies suggested a functional asymmetry of the bilateral VLPFC, but the evidence is still insufficient during cognitive reappraisal. In this study, we conducted an online single-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation to investigate the causal and distinct roles of the left and right VLPFC in reappraisal. Participants were instructed to reappraise or attend to pictures depicting social exclusion scenarios while the spTMS was applied over the left or right VLPFC of (...) the participants’ brains. The results showed that spTMS of either the left or the right VLPFC would increase reappraisal difficulty. Meanwhile, the outcome of reappraisal significantly deteriorated when the right VLPFC was temporally interrupted by spTMS, while the verbal fluency during oral reporting of the reappraisal strategy was significantly reduced when the left VLPFC was interrupted by spTMS. Taken together, these findings provide causal evidence for the involvement of left and right VLPFC with distinct roles: while the left VLPFC is responsible for the linguistic especially semantic process of generating and selecting appraisals according to the goal of emotion regulation, the right VLPFC plays a critical role in inhibiting inappropriate negative emotions and thoughts generated by the effective scenarios. These findings deepen our understanding of the neurocognitive mechanism of emotion regulation. (shrink)

How do individuals guide their activities towards some goal? Harry Frankfurt once identified the task of explaining guidance as the central problem in action theory. An explanation has proved to be elusive, however. In this paper, I show how we can marshal empirical research to make explanatory progress. I contend that human agents have a primitive capacity to guide visual attention, and that this capacity is actually constituted by a sub-individual psychological control-system: the executive system. I thus illustrate how we (...) can explain exercises of individual-level guidance by appeal to its sub-individual constitution. This opens up a new avenue for explicating agency. (shrink)

For decades, technologies that ease information sharing (e.g., the wireless telegraph; Mckernon, 1925) have inspired concerns about the proliferation of misinformation. Today, these worries often c...

I reject Lindquist et al.'s implicit claim that all emotion theories other than constructionist ones subscribe to a “brain locationist” approach. The neural mechanisms underlying relevance detection, reward, attention, conceptualization, or language use are consistent with many theories of emotion, in particular componential appraisal theories. I also question the authors' claim that the meta-analysis they report provides support for thespecificassumptions of constructionist theories.

Lindquist et al. convincingly argue that the brain implements psychological operations that are constitutive of emotion rather than modules subserving discrete emotions. However, thenatureof such psychological operations is open to debate. I argue that considering appraisal theories may provide alternative interpretations of the neuroimaging data with respect to the psychological operations involved.

Researchers have wondered how the brain creates emotions since the early days of psychological science. With a surge of studies in affective neuroscience in recent decades, scientists are poised to answer this question. In this target article, we present a meta-analytic summary of the neuroimaging literature on human emotion. We compare the locationist approach (i.e., the hypothesis that discrete emotion categories consistently and specifically correspond to distinct brain regions) with the psychological constructionist approach (i.e., the hypothesis that discrete emotion categories (...) are constructed of more general brain networks not specific to those categories) to better understand the brain basis of emotion. We review both locationist and psychological constructionist hypotheses of brain–emotion correspondence and report meta-analytic findings bearing on these hypotheses. Overall, we found little evidence that discrete emotion categories can be consistently and specifically localized to distinct brain regions. Instead, we found evidence that is consistent with a psychological constructionist approach to the mind: A set of interacting brain regions commonly involved in basic psychological operations of both an emotional and non-emotional nature are active during emotion experience and perception across a range of discrete emotion categories. (shrink)

Executive function is essential to child development, with associated skills beginning to emerge in the first few years of life and continuing to develop into adolescence and adulthood. The prefrontal cortex, which follows a neurodevelopmental timeline similar to EF, plays an important role in the development of EF. However, limited research has examined prefrontal function in young children due to limitations of currently available neuroimaging techniques such as functional resonance magnetic imaging. The current study developed and applied a multimodal Go/NoGo (...) task to examine the EF component of inhibitory control in children 4–10 years of age. Cortical activity was measured using a non-invasive and child-friendly neuroimaging technique – functional near-infrared spectroscopy. Children’s response accuracy and reaction times were captured during the fNIRS session and compared with responses obtained using the standardized assessments from NIH Toolbox cognition battery. Results showed significant correlations between the behavioral measures during the fNIRS session and the standardized EF assessments, in line with our expectations. Results from fNIRS measures demonstrated a significant, age-independent effect of inhibitory control in the right PFC, and an age-dependent effect in the left orbitofrontal cortex, consistent with results in previous studies using fNIRS and fMRI. Thus, the new task designed for fNIRS was suitable for examining IC in young children, and results showed that fNIRS measures can reveal prefrontal IC function. (shrink)

Philosophers routinely invoke self‐control in their theorizing, but major questions remain about what exactly self‐control is. I propose a componential account in which an exercise of self‐control is built out of something more fundamental: basic intrapsychic actions called cognitive control actions. Cognitive control regulates simple, brief states called response pulses that operate across diverse psychological systems (think of one's attention being grabbed by a salient object or one's mind being pulled to think about a certain topic). Self‐control ostensibly seems quite (...) different because it regulates complex, temporally extended states such as emotions and cravings. But critically, these complex states also exhibit important componential structure: They rely on response pulses as a key means by which they bring about action. The overall picture is that self‐control consists of skilled sequences of cognitive control directed against extended streams of response pulses that arise from states such as emotions and cravings, thus preventing these states from being effective in action. The account clarifies the “atoms” of self‐control—the elemental units that get combined in complex ways to produce different kinds of self‐control actions. Surprisingly, the account, which is derived from research in cognitive science, aligns nicely with the commonsense conception of self‐control. (shrink)

A critical issue in executive control is how the nervous system exerts flexibility to inhibit a prepotent response and adapt to sudden changes in the environment. In this study, force measurement was used to capture “partial” unsuccessful trials that are highly relevant in extending the current understanding of motor inhibition processing. Moreover, a modified version of the stop-signal task was used to control and eliminate potential attentional capture effects from the motor inhibition index. The results illustrate that the non-canceled force (...) and force rate increased as a function of stop-signal delay, offering new objective indices for gauging the dynamic inhibitory process. Motor response was a function of delay in the presentation of novel/infrequent stimuli. A larger lateralized readiness potential amplitude in go and novel stimuli indicated an influence of the novel stimuli on central motor processing. Moreover, an early N1 component reflects an index of motor inhibition in addition to the N2 component reported in previous studies. Source analysis revealed that the activation of N2 originated from inhibitory control associated areas: the right inferior frontal gyrus, pre-motor cortex, and primary motor cortex. Regarding partial responses, LRP and error-related negativity were associated with error correction processes, whereas the N2 component may indicate the functional overlap between inhibition and error correction. In sum, the present study has developed reliable and objective indices of motor inhibition by introducing force, force-rate and electrophysiological measures, further elucidating our understandings of dynamic motor inhibition and error correction. (shrink)