General mechanisms of task engagement in the primate frontal cortex.
Nat Commun
; 15(1): 4802, 2024 Jun 05.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-38839745
ABSTRACT
Staying engaged is necessary to maintain goal-directed behaviors. Despite this, engagement exhibits continuous, intrinsic fluctuations. Even in experimental settings, animals, unlike most humans, repeatedly and spontaneously move between periods of complete task engagement and disengagement. We, therefore, looked at behavior in male macaques (macaca mulatta) in four tasks while recording fMRI signals. We identified consistent autocorrelation in task disengagement. This made it possible to build models capturing task-independent engagement. We identified task general patterns of neural activity linked to impending sudden task disengagement in mid-cingulate gyrus. By contrast, activity centered in perigenual anterior cingulate cortex (pgACC) was associated with maintenance of performance across tasks. Importantly, we carefully controlled for task-specific factors such as the reward history and other motivational effects, such as response vigor, in our analyses. Moreover, we showed pgACC activity had a causal link to task engagement transcranial ultrasound stimulation of pgACC changed task engagement patterns.
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Reward
/
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
/
Gyrus Cinguli
/
Macaca mulatta
Limits:
Animals
Language:
En
Journal:
Nat Commun
/
Nature communications
Journal subject:
BIOLOGIA
/
CIENCIA
Year:
2024
Document type:
Article
Country of publication: