Individual differences in prefrontal cortical activation on the Tower of London planning task: implication for effortful processing

Solving challenging (‘effortful’) problems is known to involve the dorsal and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in normal volunteers, although there is considerable individual variation. In this functional magnetic resonance imaging study, we show that healthy subjects with different levels of performa...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The European journal of neuroscience 2003-05, Vol.17 (10), p.2219-2225
Main Authors: Cazalis, F., Valabrègue, R., Pélégrini-Issac, M., Asloun, S., Robbins, T. W., Granon, S.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescent
Adult
cingulate cortex
Cognition - physiology
Cognitive science
Female
fMRI
Gyrus Cinguli - physiology
human subjects
Humans
Male
Neuropsychological Tests
Neuroscience
planning
Prefrontal Cortex - physiology
Psychology
Reaction Time - physiology
Space Perception - physiology
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Summary:Solving challenging (‘effortful’) problems is known to involve the dorsal and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in normal volunteers, although there is considerable individual variation. In this functional magnetic resonance imaging study, we show that healthy subjects with different levels of performance in the Tower of London planning task exhibit different patterns of brain activation. All subjects exhibited significant bilateral activation in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the anterior and posterior cingulate areas and the parietal cortex. However, ‘standard performers’ (performance 70% correct) differed in the patterns of activation exhibited. Superior performers showed a significantly more spatially extended activation in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex than did standard performers, whereas the latter group tended to show increased activation of the anterior cingulate region.
ISSN:0953-816X
1460-9568
DOI:10.1046/j.1460-9568.2003.02633.x