Functional-anatomic exploration of cognitive control

描述(由申请者提供)：在不断变化的任务目标下，健康的年轻人可以以受控的方式灵活地处理和扩展任务相关信息。在功能解剖水平上，这种认知控制与特定前额叶区域的选择性招募有关，这些前额叶区域与后皮质区域相互作用，以压缩适合任务的表征并驱动任务绩效。本研究开始探索这些过程是如何在儿童时期发展的，在老年后期的变化，以及它们的发展阶段对行为任务表现的意义。使用这一“寿命”方法探索了两个假设。首先，我们预测，儿童的认知控制能力与招募额叶区域进行任务执行的能力是同步发展的。其次，我们预测，当额叶区域被招募时，老年人的认知控制能力会崩溃，但不是以一种选择性的方式。这项建议的另一个目标是探索在老年阶段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成分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，还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)、血流动力学和表现差异的挑战。具体目标是(1)改进方法并确定在包括儿童、年轻人和老年人在内的一生中进行功能解剖比较的边界条件；(2)使用言语任务组在儿童、年轻人和老年人的受控言语加工任务中探索额叶皮质内的激活模式；(3)在个体被试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)从儿童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，特别关注与认知控制相关的前额叶皮质和其他结构，以及(3)将这些功能-解剖变化与认知控制的行为相关性联系起来的数据。

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.