Functional-anatomic exploration of cognitive control

描述（由申请人提供）：面对不断变化的任务目标，健康的年轻人可以以可控的方式灵活地处理和扩展任务相关信息。在功能解剖学水平上，这种认知控制与特定前额叶区域的选择性招募有关，这些区域与后皮质区域相互作用，以限制任务适当的表征并驱动任务表现。目前的建议开始探索这些过程如何在童年发展，在先进的老龄化的变化，以及他们的发展阶段的意义是行为任务的表现。两个假设探讨使用这种“寿命”的方法。首先，我们预测，儿童的认知控制能力发展的同时，招募额叶区域的任务性能。第二，我们预测，认知控制打破了老年人的额叶区域时，招聘，但在一个非选择性的方式。这项提议的另一个目标是探索在老年人中非选择性招募的认知后果。通过开发和使用对与认知控制相关的组件过程敏感的认知测试，将探索皮层控制过程的出现及其崩溃的行为后果。此外，将探讨组间分析面临的方法学挑战，包括围绕可能的解剖学（发育和萎缩）、血流动力学和性能差异的方法学挑战。具体目标是（1）改进方法并确定边界条件，以便在整个生命周期（包括儿童，年轻人和老年人）中进行功能解剖学比较，（2）使用言语任务电池探索儿童，年轻人和老年人在受控言语处理任务期间额叶皮层内的激活模式，（3）测量个体受试者，他们的认知控制能力，并将这种能力与他们的正面招聘的绝对水平和正面招聘的选择性。如果完成，本提案将提供（1）从儿童到高龄的整个生命周期的功能/解剖描述方法，（2）功能/解剖发现的语料库，描述发育变化，特别关注前额叶皮层和其他与认知控制相关的结构，以及（3）将这些功能解剖变化与认知控制的行为相关性相关的数据。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Presented with changing task goals, healthy young adults can flexibly process and expand upon task relevant information in a controlled manner. At a functional-anatomic level, such cognitive control is associated with selective recruitment of specific prefrontal regions that interact with posterior cortical regions to constrict task-appropriate representations and drive task performance. The present proposal begins an exploration of how these processes develop in childhood, change in advanced aging, and what the significance of their developmental stage is to behavioral task performance. Two hypotheses are explored using this "Life span" approach. First, we predict that cognitive control develops in children concurrent with the ability to recruit frontal regions for task performance. Second, we predict that cognitive control breaks down in older adults when frontal regions are recruited, but in a non-selective manner. A further goal of this proposal is to explore the cognitive consequences of non-selective recruitment in advanced aging. By developing and using cognitive tests sensitive to component processes associated with cognitive control, the behavioral consequences of the emergence of cortical control processes and their breakdown will be explored. In addition, methodological challenges that confront between-group analyses including those surrounding possible anatomic (with development and atrophy), hemodynamic, and performance differences will be explored. Specific aims are (1) to refine methods and determine boundary conditions for making functional-anatomic comparisons across the life span including children, young adults, and older adults, (2) to explore activation patterns within frontal cortex during controlled verbal processing tasks across children, young adults, and older adults using a verbal task battery, (3) to measure, in individual subjects, their capacity for cognitive-control and associate such abilities with their absolute level of frontal recruitment and selectivity of frontal recruitment. If completed, the present proposal will provide (1) methods for functional/anatomic description across the life span from childhood to advanced aging, (2) a corpus of functional/anatomic findings describing developmental change with a particular focus on prefrontal cortex and other structures associated with cognitive control, and (3) data relating these functional-anatomic changes with behavioral correlates of cognitive control.