Effects of transcranial magnetic stimulation on reactive response inhibition.

Reactive response inhibition cancels impending actions to enable adaptive behavior in ever-changing environments and has wide neuropsychiatric implications. A canonical paradigm to measure the covert inhibition latency is the stop-signal task (SST). To probe the cortico-subcortical network underlying motor inhibition, transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) has been applied over central nodes to modulate SST performance, especially to the right inferior frontal cortex and the presupplementary motor area.

Turning the Light Switch on Binding: Prefrontal Activity for Binding and Retrieval in Action Control.

According to action control theories, responding to a stimulus leads to the binding of response and stimulus features into a common representation, that is, an event file. Repeating any component of an event file retrieves all previously bound information, leading to performance costs for partial repetitions measured in so-called binding effects. Although otherwise robust and stable, binding effects are typically completely absent in "localization tasks," in which participants localize targets with spatially compatible responses.

Time-dependent effects of acute stress on working memory performance: A systematic review and hypothesis.

Laboratory procedures such as the Trier Social Stress Test or the (Socially Evaluated) Cold Pressor Test have been used to investigate working memory performance under stress. Researchers so far have reported a diverse spectrum of stress effects (including the lack thereof) on working memory tasks. We conducted a systematic review of the effect acute stress on working memory performance in standardized laboratory procedures.

Illuminating the prefrontal neural correlates of action sequence disassembling in response-response binding.

Execution of two independent actions in quick succession results in transient binding of these two actions. Subsequent repetition of any of these actions automatically retrieves the other. This process is probably fundamental for developing complex action sequences.

Shedding light on the prefrontal correlates of mental workload in simulated driving: a functional near-infrared spectroscopy study.

Optimal mental workload plays a key role in driving performance. Thus, driver-assisting systems that automatically adapt to a drivers current mental workload via brain-computer interfacing might greatly contribute to traffic safety. To design economic brain computer interfaces that do not compromise driver comfort, it is necessary to identify brain areas that are most sensitive to mental workload changes.

Shedding light on the frontal hemodynamics of spatial working memory using functional near-infrared spectroscopy.

The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex has been shown to be a key functional network within the middle frontal gyrus in regards to working memory processing. A commonly used paradigm in this line of research is the n-back task. The standard variant of the task requires participants to state whether the current item has been presented n trials prior (or not).