Neural correlates of cognitive control in childhood and adolescence: Disentangling the contributions of age and executive function

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2005.10.013Get rights and content

Abstract

Dense-array (128-channel) electroencephalography (EEG) was used to record event-related potentials (ERPs) from 33 participants between 7 and 16 years of age while they performed a Go/Nogo task. The frontal (Nogo) N2 component of the ERP was taken as an index of cognitive control, and examined in relation to both age and independent assessments of executive function (EF), including the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), the Stroop task, a delay discounting task, and backward digit span. Better performance on the IGT and the Stroop task was associated with smaller N2 amplitudes, over and above effects of age. N2 latencies decreased with age but were not predicted by EF. Source modeling of the N2 revealed neural generators in areas suggestive of cingulate cortex and orbitofrontal cortex, and the locations of these generators varied systematically with EF (IGT and Stroop task): the cingulate generator was more anterior for good EF participants at all ages; the orbitofrontal generator was relatively left lateralized for younger and for poorer EF participants. Taken together, these findings suggest that age-related decreases in N2 amplitude, but not N2 latency, reflect the development of cognitive control and cannot be attributed solely to incidental changes that may affect assessments of the N2 (e.g., increases in skull thickness). Functionally relevant decreases in N2 amplitude may reflect changes in the regions of cortex giving rise to the N2.

Section snippets

Participants

Participants were 33 English-speaking children and adolescents (15 boys) between the ages of 7.17 and 16.75 years (mean = 11.87 years; S.D. = 2.76). All participants had normal or corrected-to-normal vision, and were free of any psychiatric diagnoses or medication. Participants were recruited through a local newspaper and paid $60.00 CDN plus a toy or gift certificate for their participation. An additional six participants were tested but eliminated from further analyses because they had fewer than

Behavioral analyses

Errors on the Go/Nogo task were controlled through the dynamic adjustment of stimulus duration, with better performance leading to shorter stimulus durations, so performance on the Go/Nogo task was measured by RTs on correct Go trials and also by stimulus duration. Go RTs below 200 ms or above 1000 ms were excluded from analysis because they were assumed to reflect non-deliberate behavior. Behavioral data from the Go/Nogo task and from the four measures of EF are summarized in Table 1. Simple and

Discussion

The frontal Nogo N2 is generally considered to be an index of cognitive control (e.g., Botvinick et al., 2001; Jodo & Kayama, 1992; Nieuwenhuis et al., 2003), reflecting neural generators in the ACC (e.g., Nieuwenhuis et al., 2003; van Veen & Carter, 2002) and orbitofrontal cortex (Bokura et al., 2001). Previous developmental research has shown that N2 amplitude and latency decrease with age (Davis et al., 2003, Johnstone et al., 2005, Jonkman et al., 2003, Lewis et al., in press, Rueda et al.,

Conclusion

This study attempted to disentangle the contributions of age and the development of EF to the frontal Nogo N2, an index of cognitive control in adults. Better performance on the IGT and the Stroop task was associated with higher N2 amplitudes, over and above effects of age, and N2 latencies decreased with age but were not predicted by EF. These findings suggest that age-related decreases in N2 amplitude, but not N2 latency, do indeed reflect the development of cognitive control and cannot be

Acknowledgements

Funding for this research was provided by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH; R21 MH67357-01) and the Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHR). We are also grateful for infrastructure support to PDZ from the Canadian Foundation for Innovation (CFI). The authors would like to thank Jim Stieben, Danielle Savona, Angela Prencipe, Isabel Granic, and Sid Segalowitz for their valuable contributions to this project.

References (51)

  • E. Jodo et al.

    Relation of a negative ERP component to response inhibition in a Go/No-go task

    Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology

    (1992)
  • S. O’Donnell et al.

    Cortical thickness of the frontopolar area in typically developing children and adolescents

    NeuroImage

    (2005)
  • A. Pfefferbaum

    Model estimates of CSF and skull influences on scalp-recorded ERPs

    Alcohol

    (1990)
  • K. Rubia et al.

    Functional frontalisation with age: Mapping neurodevelopmental trajectories with fMRI

    Neurscience & Biobehavioral Reviews

    (2000)
  • S.J. Segalowitz et al.

    Charting the maturation of the frontal lobe: An electrophysiological strategy

    Brain and Cognition

    (2004)
  • D.M. Tucker

    Spatial sampling of head electrical fields: The geodesic sensor net

    Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology

    (1993)
  • V. Anderson et al.

    Executive functions after frontal lobe injury: A developmental perspective

  • M.M. Botvinick et al.

    Conflict monitoring and cognitive control

    Psychological Review

    (2001)
  • B.J. Casey et al.

    A developmental functional MRI study of prefrontal activation during performance of a Go-No-Go task

    Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

    (1997)
  • E.P. Davis et al.

    The X-trials: Neural correlates of an inhibitory control task in children and adults

    Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

    (2003)
  • M. D’Esposito et al.

    The organization of working memory function in lateral prefrontal cortex: Evidence from event-related functional MRI

  • C. De Luca et al.

    Normative data from the CANTAB: Development of executive function over the lifespan

    Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology

    (2003)
  • C.W. Eriksen et al.

    Target redundancy in visual search: Do repetitions of the target within the display impair processing?

    Perception & Psychophysics

    (1979)
  • N.A. Fox et al.

    Developmental psychophysiology: Conceptual and methodological perspectives

  • H. Garavan et al.

    Right hemispheric dominance of inhibitory control: An event-related functional MRI study

    Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

    (1999)
  • Cited by (0)

    View full text