Anterior Cingulate Cortex, Conflict Monitoring, and Levels of Processing

doi:10.1006/nimg.2001.0923

NeuroImage

Volume 14, Issue 6, December 2001, Pages 1302-1308

https://doi.org/10.1006/nimg.2001.0923 Get rights and content

Abstract

It has been hypothesized that the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) contributes to cognition by detecting conflicts that might occur during information processing, to signal the need to engage top–down attentional processes. The present study was designed to investigate which levels of processing are being monitored by the ACC for the presence of conflict. Event-related fMRI was used to measure the response of the ACC during an interference task in which distracting information could be congruent, conflicting at the level of stimulus identification, or conflicting at the response level. Although both types of conflict caused reaction time interference, the fMRI data showed that the ACC is responsive only to response conflict, even when controlling for reaction times. These results suggest a highly specific contribution of the ACC to executive functions, through the detection of conflicts occurring at later or response-related levels of processing.

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Regular ArticleAnterior Cingulate Cortex, Conflict Monitoring, and Levels of Processing

Abstract

Neuropsychologia

Trends Cognit. Sci.

NeuroImage

Cognit. Psychol.

Anterior cingulate and the monitoring of response conflict: Evidence from an fMRI study of overt word generation

J. Cognit. Neurosci.

Conflict monitoring versus selection-for-action in anterior cingulate cortex

Nature

Conflict monitoring and cognitive control

Psychol. Rev.

Anterior cingulate cortex, error detection, and the online monitoring of performance

Science

Parsing executive processes: Strategic vs. evaluative functions of the anterior cingulate cortex

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA

Dissociation or response conflict, attentional selection, and expectancy with functional magnetic resonance imaging

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA

PsyScope: An interactive graphic system for designing and controlling experiments in the psychology laboratory using Macintosh computers

Behav. Res. Methods Instrum. Comput.

A computational approach to prefrontal cortex, cognitive control and schizophrenia: Recent developments and current challenges

Philos. Trans. R. Soc. London Biol.

Anterior cingulate and prefrontal cortex: Who's in control?

Nat. Neurosci.

Activity in the parcingulate and cingulate sulci during word generation: An fMRI study of functional anatomy

Cereb. Cortex

The neural basis of the central executive system of working memory

Nature

Localization of a neural system for error detection and compensation

Psychol. Sci.

Neural mechanisms of selective visual attention

Annu. Rev. Neurosci.

Contributions of anterior cingulate cortex to behaviour

Brain

Effects of noise letters upon the identification of a target letter in a nonsearch task

Percept. Psychophys.

Information processing in visual search: A continuous flow conception and experimental results

Percept. Psychophys.

Regular Article
Anterior Cingulate Cortex, Conflict Monitoring, and Levels of Processing