Executive control training does not generalize, even when associated with plastic changes in domain-general prefrontal areas

Abstract

How executive function training paradigms can be effectively designed to promote a transfer of the effects of interventions to untrained tasks remains unclear. Here, we tested the hypothesis that training with a complex task involving motor, perceptual and task-set control components would result in more transfer than training with a simple motor control task, because the Complex training would lead to more involvement-and in turn modification-of domain-general executive control networks. We compared performance and electrophysiological activity before and after 10 days of executive control training with the complex (n ¼ 18) versus the simple task (n ¼ 17). We further assessed the effect of the two training regimens on untrained executive tasks involving or not one of the trained control components. A passive control group (n ¼ 19) was used to assess retest effects. Both training groups improved at the trained task but exhibited different plastic changes within left-lateralized and medial frontal areas at 200-250 ms post-stimulus onset. However, contrary to our hypotheses, they showed equivalent improvement to the passive group to the transfer tasks. Our collective results reveal that the effect of training with a task involving multiple executive control components is highly specific to the trained task, even when the training modifies the functional networks underlying the trained executive components. Our findings corroborate current evidence that general cognitive enhancement cannot be achieved with training, even when the interventions modify domain-general brain areas.

Stimulus Reward Value Interacts with Training-induced Plasticity in Inhibitory Control

“…Second, while corresponding effects of short and longterm training have been found with neutral stimuli (Chavan et al, 2015;Simonet et al, 2019), we cannot rule out that long-term training might affect differently reward responses.…”

Effector-Specific Characterization of Brain Dynamics in Manual vs. Oculomotor Go/NoGo Tasks

“…Despite modulations within domain-general IC areas, the authors found no transfer effects, which suggests that different facets or subcomponents of IC rely on specific regions within this domaingeneral IC network (Dillon and Pizzagalli, 2007). While different IC tasks have been investigated to clarify the organization of this network and its subcomponents (Dillon and Pizzagalli, 2007;Spierer et al, 2013;Liu et al, 2016;Chavan et al, 2017;Rey-Mermet et al, 2018;Simonet et al, 2019), whether specific IC brain regions support different response effectors remains unknown.…”

“…Neurophysiologically, previous literature has postulated the existence of domain-general IC mechanisms that support all inhibitory tasks (Spierer et al, 2013). It has also been advanced that depending on the task's demands (Dillon and Pizzagalli, 2007;Simonet et al, 2019) or the response modality (Leung and Cai, 2007), more specific IC processes can be engaged.…”

“…Specific to IC, they found a transfer effect to a close stop-signal task and far control strategy and abstract reasoning tasks following inhibition training. Recently, Simonet et al (2019) investigated whether practicing a complex Go/NoGo task involving perceptual and task-set control components in addition to motor inhibition would lead to functional changes in IC areas and transfer effects to untrained tasks. Despite modulations within domain-general IC areas, the authors found no transfer effects, which suggests that different facets or subcomponents of IC rely on specific regions within this domaingeneral IC network (Dillon and Pizzagalli, 2007).…”

“…Our experimental protocol thus combined two Go/NoGo tasks and electrical neuroimaging methods to disentangle the domain-general IC processes and understand their subcomponents and specificities. Most of the studies investigating the neural networks underlying IC have used either one response effector in one IC task (Manuel et al, 2013;Hartmann et al, 2016;Chavan et al, 2017), one response effector in a set of different IC tasks (Enge et al, 2014;Maraver et al, 2016), or two response effectors (manual and oculomotor) in two different IC tasks (Connolly et al, 2000;Chikazoe et al, 2007), or they have merged different tasks into one single IC task (Enriquez-Geppert et al, 2010;Scharinger et al, 2015;Simonet et al, 2019). However, there are only a few direct comparisons between manual and oculomotor response effectors within the same task (Leung and Cai, 2007).…”