Cognitive control processes are advantageous when routines would not lead to the desired outcome, but this can be ill-advised when automated behavior is advantageous. The aim of this study was to identify neural dynamics related to the ability to adapt to different cognitive control demands – a process that has been referred to as ‘metacontrol.’ A sample of N = 227 healthy subjects that was split in a ‘high’ and ‘low adaptability’ group based on the behavioral performance in a task (...) with varying control demands. To examine the neurophysiological mechanisms, we combined event-related potential (ERP) recordings with source localization and machine learning approaches. The results show that individuals who are better at strategically adapting to different cognitive control demands benefit from automatizing their response processes in situations where little cognitive control is needed. On a neurophysiological level, neither perceptual/attentional selection processes nor conflict monitoring processes paralleled the behavioral data, although the latter showed a descriptive trend. Behavioral differences in metacontrol abilities were only significantly mirrored by the modulation of response-locked P3 amplitudes, which were accompanied by activation differences in insula (BA13) and middle frontal gyrus (BA9). The machine learning result corroborated this by identifying a predictive/classification feature near the peak of the response-locked P3, which arose from the anterior cingulate cortex (BA24; BA33). In short, we found that metacontrol is associated to the ability to manage response selection processes, especially the ability to effectively downregulate cognitive control under low cognitive control requirements, rather than the ability to upregulate cognitive control. (shrink)

The study of emotional changes after brain injury has contributed enormously to the understanding of the neural basis of emotion. However, little attention has been placed on the methods used to elicit emotional responses in people with brain damage. Of particular interest are subjects with right hemisphere [RH] cortical lesions, who have been described as presenting impairment in emotional processing. In this article, an internal and external mood induction procedure [MIP] was used to trigger positive and negative emotions, in a (...) sample of 10 participants with RH damage, and 15 healthy controls. Emotional experience was registered by using a self-report questionnaire. As observed in previous studies, internal and external MIPs were equally effective in eliciting the target emotion, but the internal procedure generated higher levels of intensity. Remarkably, participants with RH lesions were equally able to experience both positive and negative affect. The results are discussed in relation to the role of the RH in the capacity to experience negative emotions. (shrink)

In the present study, using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging, we investigated a group of participants on a grammaticality classification task after they had been exposed to well-formed consonant strings generated from an artificial regular grammar. We used an implicit acquisition paradigm in which the participants were exposed to positive examples. The objective of this studywas to investigate whether brain regions related to language processing overlap with the brain regions activated by the grammaticality classification task used in the present study. (...) Recent meta-analyses of functional neuroimaging studies indicate that syntactic processing is related to the left inferior frontal gyrus (Brodmann's areas 44 and 45) or Broca's region. In the present study, we observed that artificial grammaticality violations activated Broca's region in all participants. This observation lends some support to the suggestions that artificial grammar learning represents a model for investigating aspects of language learning in infants [TICS 4 (2000) 178] and adults [Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of United States of America 99 (2002) 529]. (shrink)