Cog control 2 Flashcards
(20 cards)
What are the two major types of behavioral control?
Automatic (stimulus-driven, habitual) and goal-directed (deliberate, guided by internal goals).
Where are goals thought to reside in the brain?
Primarily in the prefrontal cortex (PFC), a heteromodal association area with wide connectivity.
What historical case highlighted the role of medial frontal cortex in goal regulation?
Phineas Gage, who suffered personality and executive control changes after a tamping rod injury.
What syndrome arises from frontal lobe damage?
Dysexecutive syndrome—marked by preserved IQ but impaired planning, inhibition, and goal-directedness.
What are common symptoms of dysexecutive syndrome?
Perseveration, environmental dependency, poor planning, disconnect between knowledge and action, and social disinhibition.
Which tasks reveal cognitive deficits in PFC-damaged patients?
Wisconsin Card Sorting Task (perseveration), Multiple Errands Task (poor planning), and Tower of London (planning delay).
What network is commonly activated during cognitively demanding tasks?
The multiple-demand network, including lateral PFC, dorsal medial PFC, and posterior parietal cortex.
What is response inhibition?
The ability to stop or prevent inappropriate actions, assessed by Go/No-Go and Stop-signal tasks.
What brain regions support response inhibition?
Inferior frontal gyrus, pre-SMA, subthalamic nucleus (brake), and motor cortex.
What happens when the inferior frontal gyrus is damaged?
Impaired ability to stop inappropriate responses in tasks like Stop-signal or Go/No-Go.
What is thought suppression in cognitive control?
Intentionally preventing the recall of specific thoughts, leading to reduced hippocampal activity.
How does the PFC influence thought suppression?
PFC-mediated suppression of hippocampal activity leads to poorer memory encoding and recall.
How does context help in sentence comprehension?
Context allows prediction of upcoming words and smoother integration of semantic content.
What ERP component is linked to semantic incongruency?
The N400, localized to the left temporal cortex.
What ERP component reflects syntactic/thematic role violations?
The P600, associated with the left inferior frontal cortex.
Which brain region supports comprehension of complex sentence structures?
Left inferior frontal gyrus, due to increased memory demands for maintaining structure.
What happens when you read a sentence like ‘The juice that the child enjoyed stained the rug’?
It requires maintaining the subject while parsing embedded clauses, increasing left IFG activation.
What dual role does the left IFG play in language?
It helps with both complex sentence comprehension and verb generation during word production.
What visual areas support reading?
V4 (letter strings) and VWFA (semantic processing of written words), with VWFA being left-lateralized.
How does reading differ across languages like English and Italian?
English relies more on VWFA (orthography), while Italian relies more on secondary auditory areas (phonology).
