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，前额叶区域与后皮层区域相互作用，以收缩任务适当的表征并驱动任务表现。本研究旨在探讨这些过程在儿童时期是如何发展的，在老年时是如何变化的，以及它们的发展阶段对行为任务表现的意义。使用这种“生命周期”方法探索了两个假设。首先，我们预测儿童的认知控制发展与利用额叶区域完成任务的能力是同步的。其次，我们预测，当额叶区域被调动时，老年人的认知控制会失灵，但不是以一种选择性的方式。本研究的另一个目标是探讨非选择性招募对老年患者的认知影响。通过开发和使用对与认知控制相关的组成过程敏感的认知测试，将探索皮层控制过程的出现及其分解的行为后果。此外，将探讨组间分析面临的方法学挑战，包括可能的解剖学（发育和萎缩）、血流动力学和性能差异。具体目标是：(1)改进方法并确定边界条件，以便在包括儿童、年轻人和老年人在内的整个生命周期内进行功能解剖比较；(2)使用语言任务电池探索儿童、年轻人和老年人在受控语言处理任务期间额叶皮层内的激活模式；(3)在个体受试者中测量，他们的认知控制能力并将这种能力与他们的额叶招募的绝对水平和额叶招募的选择性联系起来。如果完成，本提案将提供(1)从童年到老年的整个生命周期的功能/解剖描述方法，(2)描述发育变化的功能/解剖发现语料库，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.