RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Shared Neural Representations of Cognitive Conflict and Negative Affect in the Medial Frontal Cortex
JF The Journal of Neuroscience
JO J. Neurosci.
FD Society for Neuroscience
SP 8715
OP 8725
DO 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1744-20.2020
VO 40
IS 45
A1 Vermeylen, Luc
A1 Wisniewski, David
A1 González-García, Carlos
A1 Hoofs, Vincent
A1 Notebaert, Wim
A1 Braem, Senne
YR 2020
UL http://www.jneurosci.org/content/40/45/8715.abstract
AB Influential theories of Medial Frontal Cortex (MFC) function suggest that the MFC registers cognitive conflict as an aversive signal, but no study directly tested this idea. Instead, recent studies suggested that nonoverlapping regions in the MFC process conflict and affect. In this preregistered human fMRI study (male and female), we used MVPAs to identify which regions respond similarly to conflict and aversive signals. The results reveal that, of all conflict- and value-related regions, only the ventral pre-supplementary motor area (or dorsal anterior cingulate cortex) showed a shared neural pattern response to different conflict and affect tasks. These findings challenge recent conclusions that conflict and affect are processed independently, and provide support for integrative views of MFC function.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Multiple theories propose that the MFC, and the dorsal ACC in particular, integrates information related to suboptimal outcomes from different psychological domains (e.g., cognitive control and negative affect) with the aim of adaptively steering behavior. In contrast to recent studies in the field, we provide evidence for the idea that cognitive control and negative affect are integrated in the MFC by showing that a classification algorithm trained on discerning cognitive control (conflict vs no conflict) can predict affect (negative vs positive) in the voxel pattern response of the dorsal ACC/pre-SMA.