A neural substrate of early response capture during conflict tasks in sensory areas

Discriminative neural pathways for perception-cognition activity of color and face in the human brain

Human performance can be examined using a visual lens. The identification of psychophysical colors and emotional faces with perceptual visual pathways may remain invalid for simple detection tasks. In particular, how the visual dorsal and ventral processing streams handle discriminative visual perceptions and subsequent cognition activities are obscure. We explored these issues using stereoelectroencephalography recordings, which were obtained from patients with pharmacologically resistant epilepsy. Delayed match-to-sample paradigms were used for analyzing the processing of simple colors and complex emotional faces in the human brain. We showed that the angular-cuneus gyrus acts as a pioneer in discriminating the 2 features, and dorsal regions, including the middle frontal gyrus (MFG) and postcentral gyrus, as well as ventral regions, such as the middle temporal gyrus (MTG) and posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS), were involved in processing incongruent colors and faces. Critically, the beta and gamma band activities between the cuneus and MTG and between the cuneus and pSTS would tune a separate pathway of incongruency processing. In addition, posterior insular gyrus, fusiform, and MFG were found for attentional modulation of the 2 features via alpha band activities. These findings suggest the neural basis of the discriminative pathways of perception-cognition activities in the human brain.

Cortical and subcortical contributions to interference resolution and inhibition - An fMRI ALE meta-analysis

Interacting with our environment requires the selection of appropriate responses and the inhibition of others. Such effortful inhibition is achieved by a number of interference resolution and global inhibition processes. This meta-analysis including 57 studies and 73 contrasts revisits the overlap and differences in brain areas supporting interference resolution and global inhibition in cortical and subcortical brain areas. Activation likelihood estimation was used to discern the brain regions subserving each type of cognitive control. Individual contrast analysis revealed a common activation of the bilateral insula and supplementary motor areas. Subtraction analyses demonstrated the voxel-wise differences in recruitment in a number of areas including the precuneus in the interference tasks and the frontal pole and dorsal striatum in the inhibition tasks. Our results display a surprising lack of subcortical involvement within these types of cognitive control, a finding that is likely to reflect a systematic gap in the field of functional neuroimaging.