Proactive Control: Neural Oscillatory Correlates of Conflict Anticipation and Response Slowing

Abstract

Proactive control allows us to anticipate environmental changes and adjust behavioral strategy. In the laboratory, investigators have used a number of different behavioral paradigms, including the stop-signal task (SST), to examine the neural processes of proactive control. Previous functional MRI studies of the SST have demonstrated regional responses to conflict anticipation—the likelihood of a stop signal or P(stop) as estimated by a Bayesian model—and reaction time (RT) slowing and how these responses are interrelated. Here, in an electrophysiological study, we investigated the time–frequency domain substrates of proactive control. The results showed that conflict anticipation as indexed by P(stop) was positively correlated with the power in low-theta band (3–5 Hz) in the fixation (trial onset)-locked interval, and go-RT was negatively correlated with the power in delta-theta band (2–8 Hz) in the go-locked interval. Stimulus prediction error was positively correlated with the power in the low-beta band (12–22 Hz) in the stop-locked interval. Further, the power of the P(stop) and go-RT clusters was negatively correlated, providing a mechanism relating conflict anticipation to RT slowing in the SST. Source reconstruction with beamformer localized these time–frequency activities close to brain regions as revealed by functional MRI in earlier work. These are the novel results to show oscillatory electrophysiological substrates in support of trial-by-trial behavioral adjustment for proactive control.

Lateral Prefrontal Theta Oscillations Reflect Proactive Cognitive Control Impairment in Males With Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

“…This lack of RT progression suggests that children with ADHD, unlike TD children, do not develop an expectation of the target stimulus (the Nogo stimulus). This could be related to impairments in the allocation of cognitive resources for proactive cognitive control (Braver, 2012;Chang et al, 2017). This lack of contextual control for inhibiting the motor response in the Nogo trials contributes to the higher error rate of the ADHD group in the Nogo trials, a finding that is consistent with previous evidence (Spronk et al, 2008;Henríquez-Henríquez et al, 2015).…”

“…Proactive cognitive control is the ability to modify our responses anticipating the necessity of cognitive control based on the context provided by recent events (Hu and Li, 2012;Koechlin, 2014;Chang et al, 2017;Ryman et al, 2018), as opposed to reactive cognitive control, which requires the engagement of control processes at the onset of challenging task demands (Braver et al, 2009;Braver, 2012). Thus, proactive cognitive control requires the integration of past events and experience to adjust current goal-directed actions (Donoso et al, 2014), modifying and improving the cognitive control required for upcoming conflictive stimuli.…”

Brain reflections: A circuit‐based framework for understanding information processing and cognitive control

“…Several articles have shown that theta bursts (typically lasting a few hundred milliseconds) are associated with conflict or with conditions requiring enhanced cognitive control (e.g., Harper, Malone, & Iacono, ; McDermott, Weisman, Proskovec, Heinrichs‐Graham, & Wilson, , Töllner et al, ). Although some authors (e.g., Töllner et al, ) have linked these increases in theta activity to conflict monitoring per se, others have linked the amplitude of this signal to task complexity (e.g., Cooper et al, —who also reported an increase in delta activity; Voytek et al, ), task switching (e.g., Cunillera et al, ), or in some cases to the anticipation of conflict (e.g, Chang, Ide, Li, Chen, & Li, ). In general, investigators (e.g., Cooper et al, ; Phillips, Vinck, Everling, & Womelsdorf, ; Voytek et al, ) have associated bursts of frontal theta with facilitation of the reprogramming of the information processing system for a specific task (see also Bonneford et al, 2017, for attribution of this role to even lower frequency activities, such as delta).…”

Patterns of Focal- and Large-Scale Synchronization in Cognitive Control and Inhibition: A Review

“…Slowing of RT is instead negatively associated with IFG and posterior delta-theta activity. The results suggest that stop-expectancy and response-inhibition are processed by distinct frontoparietal networks, in coordination with temporally distinguished theta contributions (Chang et al, 2017 ). The evidence supports earlier-discussed fMRI findings (Hu et al, 2015a , b ; Manza et al, 2016 ) in that proactive behavioral inhibition does not map onto a specific brain region, but, instead, results from the interaction between distributed frontoparietal MDC networks (Hampshire and Sharp, 2015 ).…”

“…Stop-expectancy can be quantified trial-by-trial as stop-occurrence-probability from a dynamic Bayesian model (Yu and Cohen, 2009 ) and behaviorally, it correlates with RT slowing to go-signals. The spectral correlates of stop-expectancy and RT-slowing seem to be inversely related across trials (Chang et al, 2017 ). Stop-anticipation is accompanied by a pronounced low-theta activity in the supramarginal gyrus (SMG) and anterior SMC preceding, but not after, the occurrence of the go-signal.…”