Cerebral Cortex Advance Access published online on July 24, 2008
Cerebral Cortex, doi:10.1093/cercor/bhn119
Anterior Cingulate Cortex Makes 2 Contributions to Minimizing Distraction
Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA
Address correspondence to Daniel Weissman, Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, 530 Church Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA. Email: danweiss{at}umich.edu.
When we detect conflicting irrelevant stimuli (e.g., nearby conversations), we often minimize distraction by increasing attention to relevant stimuli. However, dissociating the neural substrates of processes that detect conflict and processes that increase attention has proven exceptionally difficult. Using a novel cross-modal attentional cueing task in humans, we observed regional specialization for these processes in the cognitive division of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACCcd). Activity in a dorsal subregion was associated with increasing attention to relevant stimuli, correlated with behavioral measures of orienting attention to those stimuli, and resembled activity in dorsolateral prefrontal regions that are also thought to bias attention toward relevant stimuli. In contrast, activity in a rostral subregion was associated only with detecting response conflict caused by irrelevant stimuli. These findings support a 2-component model for minimizing distraction and speak to a longstanding debate over how the ACCcd contributes to cognitive control.
Key Words: cognitive control • cross-modal • fMRI • response conflict • selective attention