Left Inferior Prefrontal Cortex Activity Reflects Inhibitory Rather Than Facilitatory Priming

Functional neuroimaging has demonstrated reduced activation correlated with behavioral priming effects, a finding generally interpreted in terms of facilitated retrieval of target items in the context of related primes. Without a neutral prime, however, one cannot separate facilitatory effects of re...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of cognitive neuroscience 2004-11, Vol.16 (9), p.1552-1561
Main Authors: Cardillo, Eileen R., Aydelott, Jennifer, Matthews, Paul M., Devlin, Joseph T.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescent
Adult
Anatomical correlates of behavior
Behavioral psychophysiology
Biological and medical sciences
Brain
Brain Mapping
Cognition & reasoning
Female
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Humans
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Male
Mental Processes - physiology
Neural Inhibition - physiology
Neurology
NMR
Nuclear magnetic resonance
Prefrontal Cortex - physiology
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Reference Values
Verbal Behavior - physiology
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Summary:Functional neuroimaging has demonstrated reduced activation correlated with behavioral priming effects, a finding generally interpreted in terms of facilitated retrieval of target items in the context of related primes. Without a neutral prime, however, one cannot separate facilitatory effects of related primes from inhibitory effects of unrelated primes. Here we report an auditory semantic priming paradigm with congruent (“The boy bounced the ”), neutral (“The next item is ”), and incongruent (“Pasta is my favorite kind of ”) sentence trials. As previously reported, reduced left inferior prefrontal cortex activation was observed for congruent relative to incongruent trials; however, the neutral condition allowed us to show that the effect arose from increased activation in the incongruent condition rather than reduced activation for congruent trials. Our results suggest that the left inferior prefrontal cortex inhibits interference from prepotent representations in order to select a task-appropriate target, and is consistent with its broader role in behavioral inhibition.
ISSN:0898-929X
1530-8898
DOI:10.1162/0898929042568523