ArticleThe Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience2018
Causal Evidence for Learning-Dependent Frontal Lobe Contributions to Cognitive Control.
Article in The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 24 papers.
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Who cites it
24 citing papers in PubMed, 46 citations in OpenAlex.
- Brain network dynamics reflect psychiatric illness status and transdiagnostic symptom profiles across health and disease.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Reward masks the learning of cognitive control demand.Cognitive neurodynamics · 2025Article
- Preparatory attentional templates in prefrontal and sensory cortex encode target-associated information.eLife · 2025Article
- Probing Neural Compensation in Rehabilitation of Acute Ischemic Stroke with Lesion Network Similarity Using Resting State Functional MRI.Brain sciences · 2025Article
- Temporal Dynamics and Representational Consequences of the Control of Processing Conflict between Visual Working Memory and Visual Perception.Journal of cognitive neuroscience · 2025Article
- Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Applications in the Study of Executive Functions: A Review.Brain and behavior · 2024Review
- Cognitive control and meta-control in dual-task coordination.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2024Review
- Learning Cognitive Flexibility: Neural Substrates of Adapting Switch-Readiness to Time-varying Demands.Journal of cognitive neuroscience · 2024Article
- cTBS to Right DLPFC Modulates Physiological Correlates of Conflict Processing: Evidence from a Stroop task.Brain topography · 2024Article
- Causal roles of prefrontal and temporo-parietal theta oscillations for inequity aversion.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2023Article
- Principles of cognitive control over task focus and task switching.Nature reviews psychology · 2023Article
- A neurophysiological perspective on the integration between incidental learning and cognitive control.Communications biology · 2023Article
- Flexible top-down control in the interaction between working memory and perception.Journal of vision · 2022Article
- Distinct but correlated latent factors support the regulation of learned conflict-control and task-switching.Cognitive psychology · 2022Article
- Large-scale reconfiguration of connectivity patterns among attentional networks during context-dependent adjustment of cognitive control.Human brain mapping · 2021Article
- Structure, function and connectivity fingerprints of the frontal eye field versus the inferior frontal junction: A comprehensive comparison.The European journal of neuroscience · 2021Review
- Learning to Overexert Cognitive Control in a Stroop Task.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2021Article
- Performance feedback promotes proactive but not reactive adaptation of conflict-control.Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance · 2020Article
- Temporal Dynamics of Memory-guided Cognitive Control and Generalization of Control via Overlapping Associative Memories.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2020Article
- Emotional conflict adaptation predicts intrusive memories.PloS one · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
Abstract
The lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC) plays a central role in the prioritization of sensory input based on task relevance. Such top-down control of perception is of fundamental importance in goal-directed behavior, but can also be costly when deployed excessively, necessitating a mechanism that regulates control engagement to align it with changing environmental demands. We have recently introduced the "flexible control model" (FCM), which explains this regulation as resulting from a self-adjusting reinforcement-learning mechanism that infers latent statistical structure in dynamic task environments to predict forthcoming states. From this perspective, LPFC-based control is engaged as a function of anticipated cognitive demand, a notion for which we previously obtained correlative neuroimaging evidence. Here, we put this hypothesis to a rigorous, causal test by combining the FCM with a transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) intervention that transiently perturbed the LPFC. Human participants (male and female) completed a nonstationary version of the Stroop task with dynamically changing probabilities of conflict between task-relevant and task-irrelevant stimulus features. TMS was given on each trial before stimulus onset either over the LPFC or over a control site. In the control condition, we observed adaptive performance fluctuations consistent with demand predictions that were inferred from recent and remote trial history and effectively captured by our model. Critically, TMS over the LPFC eliminated these fluctuations while leaving basic cognitive and motor functions intact. These results provide causal evidence for a learning-based account of cognitive control and delineate the nature of the signals that regulate top-down biases over stimulus processing.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.