Development of the Selection and Manipulation of Self-Generated Thoughts in Adolescence

Dumontheil, Iroise; Hassan, Bano; Gilbert, Sam J.; Blakemore, Sarah‐Jayne

doi:10.1523/jneurosci.1375-10.2010

Cited by 31 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 52 publications

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“…A decrease in activation between the Mid Adolescent and Adult groups was observed in the left AI/FO, which was not accounted for by performance or structural changes with age. Functional changes in the left AI/FO may instead reflect the maturation of neurocognitive strategies (see Dumontheil, Hassan, Gilbert & Blakemore, 2010, for similar results), which may include changes in task specific connectivity between brain regions, supported for example by increased long range functional connectivity during development (Fair, Cohen, Dosenbach, Church, Miezin, Barch, Raichle, Petersen & Schlaggar, 2008), changes in the balance between mesocortical and mesolimbic systems (see Spear, 2000, for review), or else reflect the maturation of the neurotransmitter systems (Insel, Miller & Gelhard, 1990; Tseng & O’Donnell, 2005, 2007).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Development of relational reasoning during adolescence

Dumontheil

Houlton

Christoff

et al. 2010

Developmental Science

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Non-linear changes in behaviour and in brain activity during adolescent development have been reported in a variety of cognitive tasks. These developmental changes are often interpreted as being a consequence of changes in brain structure, including non-linear changes in grey matter volumes, which occur during adolescence. However, very few studies have attempted to combine behavioural, functional and structural data. This multi-method approach is the one we took in the current study, which was designed to investigate developmental changes in behaviour and brain activity during relational reasoning, the simultaneous integration of multiple relations. We used a relational reasoning task known to recruit rostrolateral prefrontal cortex (RLPFC), a region that undergoes substantial structural changes during adolescence. The task was administered to female participants in a behavioural (N=178, 7-27 years) and an fMRI study (N=37, 11-30 years). Non-linear changes in accuracy were observed, with poorer performance during mid-adolescence. fMRI and VBM results revealed a complex picture of linear and possibly non-linear changes with age.Performance and structural changes partly accounted for changes with age in RLPFC and medial superior frontal gyrus activity but not for a decrease in activation in the anterior insula/frontal operculum between midadolescence and adulthood. These functional changes might instead reflect the maturation of neurocognitive strategies.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Development of relational reasoning during adolescence

Dumontheil

Houlton

Christoff

et al. 2010

Developmental Science

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“…In previous studies, it is not clear whether this greater MPFC activation is due to adolescents "overmentalizing" in response to the same stimuli, or having to put in more work in terms of neural resources to achieve the same mentalizing computations or to lower signal-to-noise ratio associated with increased prefrontal gray matter volumes in adolescence compared with adulthood (see Blakemore, 2008). Recent work using other tasks suggests that decreases in brain activation during adolescence do not necessarily reflect concomitant gray matter volumes decreases (Dumontheil, Hassan, Gilbert, & Blakemore, 2010;Dumontheil, Houlton, Christoff, & Blakemore, 2010). The current study provides no evidence that adolescents use more neural effort to achieve the same mentalizing performance: In the absence of differences in performance, adolescents did not show greater activations than adults in Director Present 3-object trials, which require participants to take the directorʼs perspective into account.…”

Section: The Use Of Perspective Information To Guide Action Selectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Developmental Differences in the Control of Action Selection by Social Information

Dumontheil

Hillebrandt

Apperly

et al. 2012

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

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Abstract■ Our everyday actions are often performed in the context of a social interaction. We previously showed that, in adults, selecting an action on the basis of either social or symbolic cues was associated with activations in the fronto-parietal cognitive control network, whereas the presence and use of social versus symbolic cues was in addition associated with activations in the temporal and medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) social brain network. Here we investigated developmental changes in these two networks. Fourteen adults (21-30 years of age) and 14 adolescents (11-16 years) followed instructions to move objects in a set of shelves. Interpretation of the instructions was conditional on the point of view of a visible "director" or the meaning of a symbolic cue (Director Present vs. Director Absent) and the number of potential referent objects in the shelves (3-object vs. 1-object). 3-object trials elicited increased fronto-parietal and temporal activations, with greater left lateral prefrontal cortex and parietal activations in adults than adolescents. Social versus symbolic information led to activations in superior dorsal MPFC, precuneus, and along the superior/middle temporal sulci. Both dorsal MPFC and left temporal clusters exhibited a Director × Object interaction, with greater activation when participants needed to consider the directorsʼ viewpoints. This effect differed with age in dorsal MPFC. Adolescents showed greater activation whenever social information was present, whereas adults showed greater activation only when the directorsʼ viewpoints were relevant to task performance. This study thus shows developmental differences in domain-general and domain-specific PFC activations associated with action selection in a social interaction context. ■

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“…In addition, the medial and rostral-lateral portion of the PFC are also implicated in social cognition and metacognitive problem solving (Burgess et al, 2007; Dumontheil et al, 2010a,b) and individual differences in the volume of the rostral-lateral PFC predict metacognitive ability (Fleming et al, 2010). Metacognition supports flexible problem solving, and is thought to both monitor and control internal and external attention (Flavell, 1979; Fleming et al, 2012).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The balanced mind: the variability of task-unrelated thoughts predicts error monitoring

Allen

2013

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

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Self-generated thoughts unrelated to ongoing activities, also known as “mind-wandering,” make up a substantial portion of our daily lives. Reports of such task-unrelated thoughts (TUTs) predict both poor performance on demanding cognitive tasks and blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) activity in the default mode network (DMN). However, recent findings suggest that TUTs and the DMN can also facilitate metacognitive abilities and related behaviors. To further understand these relationships, we examined the influence of subjective intensity, ruminative quality, and variability of mind-wandering on response inhibition and monitoring, using the Error Awareness Task (EAT). We expected to replicate links between TUT and reduced inhibition, and explored whether variance in TUT would predict improved error monitoring, reflecting a capacity to balance between internal and external cognition. By analyzing BOLD responses to subjective probes and the EAT, we dissociated contributions of the DMN, executive, and salience networks to task performance. While both response inhibition and online TUT ratings modulated BOLD activity in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) of the DMN, the former recruited a more dorsal area implying functional segregation. We further found that individual differences in mean TUTs strongly predicted EAT stop accuracy, while TUT variability specifically predicted levels of error awareness. Interestingly, we also observed co-activation of salience and default mode regions during error awareness, supporting a link between monitoring and TUTs. Altogether our results suggest that although TUT is detrimental to task performance, fluctuations in attention between self-generated and external task-related thought is a characteristic of individuals with greater metacognitive monitoring capacity. Achieving a balance between internally and externally oriented thought may thus aid individuals in optimizing their task performance.

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Development of the Selection and Manipulation of Self-Generated Thoughts in Adolescence

Cited by 31 publications

References 52 publications

Development of relational reasoning during adolescence

Development of relational reasoning during adolescence

Developmental Differences in the Control of Action Selection by Social Information

The balanced mind: the variability of task-unrelated thoughts predicts error monitoring

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