Attentional Control in Anterior Cingulate Cortex Based on Probabilistic Cueing

摘要

In Stroop-like tasks, conflict effects in behavioral measuresnand ACC activity are smaller on trials following an incongruentntrial than following a congruent one. Researchers have foundnno agreement on whether these sequential effects in ACC cannbe driven by experienced incongruency only or also by expectationsnabout target types. In the present fMRI experiment, wenspecifically manipulated the expectancies by using symbolic cuesnpredicting with 75% or 50% certainty the incongruent or congruentntargets in a Stroop-like task. Both behavioral and dorsal ACCndata replicated previous sequential effects, with conflict effectsnbeing smallest for targets following the cues that predicted withn75% certainty the incongruent targets. However, these effectsnwere not driven by experienced conflict but by symbolic cues.nThese results demonstrate differential attentional control activitynin ACC after probabilistic cueing, providing evidence for controlnadjustments driven by changes in expectation. ■