Abstract:
The ability to find the right balance between more persistent and more flexible cognitive-control styles is known as \"metacontrol.\" Recent findings suggest a relevance of aperiodic EEG activity and task conditions that are likely to elicit a specific metacontrol style. Here we investigated whether individual differences in aperiodic EEG activity obtained off-task (during resting state) predict individual cognitive-control styles under task conditions that pose different demands on metacontrol. We analyzed EEG resting-state data, task-EEG, and behavioral outcomes from a sample of N = 65 healthy participants performing a Go/Nogo task. We examined aperiodic activity as indicator of \"neural noise\" in the EEG power spectrum, and participants were assigned to a high-noise or low-noise group according to a median split of the exponents obtained for resting state. We found that off-task aperiodic exponents predicted different cognitive-control styles in Go and Nogo conditions: Overall, aperiodic exponents were higher (i.e., noise was lower) in the low-noise group, who however showed no difference between Go and Nogo trials, whereas the high-noise group exhibited significant noise reduction in the more persistence-heavy Nogo condition. This suggests that trait-like biases determine the default cognitive-control style, which however can be overwritten or compensated for under challenging task demands. We suggest that aperiodic activity in EEG signals represents valid indicators of highly dynamic arbitration between metacontrol styles, representing the brain\'s capability to reorganize itself and adapt its neural activity patterns to changing environmental conditions.
摘要:
在更持久和更灵活的认知控制方式之间找到正确平衡的能力被称为“元控制”。“最近的研究结果表明,非周期性脑电图活动和任务条件的相关性可能会引起特定的元控制方式。在这里,我们研究了在任务外(在静息状态下)获得的非周期性EEG活动的个体差异是否可以预测在对元控制提出不同要求的任务条件下的个体认知控制方式。我们分析了EEG静息状态数据,任务脑电图,和来自N=65名执行Go/Nogo任务的健康参与者样本的行为结果。我们检查了非周期性活动,作为EEG功率谱中“神经噪声”的指标,根据静息状态下获得的指数的中位数分裂,将参与者分配到高噪声或低噪声组.我们发现,非任务非周期性指数在Go和Nogo条件下预测了不同的认知控制方式:总体而言,非周期性指数较高(即,噪音较低)在低噪声组中,然而,他们在围棋和诺戈试验之间没有区别,而高噪声组在持久性较重的Nogo条件下表现出显着的降噪效果。这表明类似特质的偏见决定了默认的认知控制方式,然而,在具有挑战性的任务要求下,这可以被覆盖或补偿。我们建议EEG信号中的非周期性活动代表元控制样式之间高度动态仲裁的有效指标,代表大脑重组自身并使其神经活动模式适应不断变化的环境条件的能力。