Behavioral facilitation and increased brain responses from a high interference working memory context

Abstract

Many real-life situations require flexible behavior in changing environments. Evidence suggests that anticipation of conflict or task difficulty results in behavioral and neural allocation of task-relevant resources. Here we used a high- and low-interference version of an item-recognition task to examine the neurobehavioral underpinnings of context-sensitive adjustment in working memory (WM). We hypothesized that task environments that included high-interference trials would require participants to allocate neurocognitive resources to adjust to the more demanding task context. The results of two independent behavioral experiments showed enhanced WM performance in the high-interference context, which indicated that a high-interference context improves performance on non-interference trials. A third behavioral experiment showed that when WM load was increased, this effect was no longer significant. Neuroimaging results further showed greater engagement of inferior frontal gyrus, striatum, parietal cortex, hippocampus, and midbrain in participants performing the task in the high- than in the low-interference context. This effect could arise from an active or dormant mode of anticipation that seems to engage fronto-striatal and midbrain regions to flexibly adjust resources to task demands. Our results extend the model of conflict adaptation beyond trial-to-trial adjustments by showing that a high interference context affects both behavioral and biological aspects of cognition.

Monitoring Multiple Deadlines Relies on Spatial Processing in Posterior Parietal Cortex

“…This pattern may be the result of strategic choices of the participants, in which they increased effort with more countdowns, while at the same time focusing on a subset of component tasks. Such behavioral facilitation from increasing task demands were recently demonstrated within the context of working memory and executive control (Samrani, Marklund, Engström, Broman, & Persson, 2018). Moreover, and partly in line with previous studies (Kubik et al, 2018(Kubik et al, , 2019Todorov et al, 2014;Mäntylä, 2013), performance on this best countdown was predicted by participants' spatial (mental rotation) abilities, even after controlling for working memory (binding) skills.…”

Different Markov chains modulate visual stimuli processing in a Go-Go experiment in 2D, 3D, and augmented reality

“…Results from preceding stimuli were observed in the lower part of Figure 1, where the EEG dependence was found in the correlation of the properties of the current and the immediately prior stimuli. Moreover, prior research has found no evidence of any deficiency in N100 type potentials (Mugruza-Vassallo, 2016b;Mugruza-Vassallo and Potter, 2019) in agreement with Rosburg (2018). Likewise, the research of Samrani et al (2018) also involved the context of working memory relating to stimuli.…”

Different Markov chains modulate visual stimuli processing in a Go-Go experiment in 2D, 3D and augmented reality

“…Moreover, Mugruza-Vassallo's experiments have not found evidence of any de ciency in N100 type potentials in agreement with Rosburg [18]. Likewise, Samrani and colleagues [19] have also involved the context of work memory related to stimuli. Considering the dependence of the previous answer as a possible Markov process, the present research has considered a subset of characteristics to simplify the videogame than the case of Torres-Tejada and colleagues [10], where 5 types of stimuli were used (see part upper of Figure 1).…”