Practice and Difficulty Evoke Anatomically and Pharmacologically Dissociable Brain Activation Dynamics

Brain activation is adaptive to task difficulty and practice. We used functional MRI to map brain systems activated by an object-location learning task in 24 healthy elderly volunteers each scanned following placebo and two of four active drugs studied. We distinguished a fronto-striatal system adap...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. 1991) N.Y. 1991), 2003-02, Vol.13 (2), p.144-154
Main Authors: Bullmore, Ed, Suckling, John, Zelaya, Fernando, Long, Chris, Honey, Garry, Reed, Laurence, Routledge, Carol, Ng, Virginia, Fletcher, Paul, Brown, John, Williams, Steve C.R.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adrenergic Uptake Inhibitors - pharmacology
Aged
Brain - drug effects
Brain - physiology
Brain Mapping
Cognition - physiology
Corpus Striatum - drug effects
Corpus Striatum - physiology
Diazepam - pharmacology
Dopamine Antagonists - pharmacology
Female
Frontal Lobe - drug effects
Frontal Lobe - physiology
GABA Modulators - pharmacology
Gyrus Cinguli - drug effects
Gyrus Cinguli - physiology
Humans
Learning - physiology
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Male
Methylphenidate - pharmacology
Middle Aged
Motor Cortex - drug effects
Motor Cortex - physiology
Muscarinic Antagonists - pharmacology
Parietal Lobe - drug effects
Parietal Lobe - physiology
Practice (Psychology)
Scopolamine - pharmacology
Sulpiride - pharmacology
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Summary:Brain activation is adaptive to task difficulty and practice. We used functional MRI to map brain systems activated by an object-location learning task in 24 healthy elderly volunteers each scanned following placebo and two of four active drugs studied. We distinguished a fronto-striatal system adaptive to difficulty from a posterior system adaptive to practice. Fronto-striatal response to increased cognitive load was significantly attenuated by scopolamine, sulpiride and methylphenidate; practice effects were not modulated by these drugs but were enhanced by diazepam. We also found enhancement by methylphenidate, and attenuation by sulpiride, of load response in premotor, cingulate and parietal regions comprising a spatial attention network. Difficulty and practice evoke anatomically and pharmacologically dissociable brain activation dynamics, which are probably mediated by different neurotransmitter systems in humans.
ISSN:1047-3211
1460-2199
1460-2199
DOI:10.1093/cercor/13.2.144