Causal effects of cingulate morphology on executive functions in healthy young adults.

In this study, we want to explore evidence for the causal relationship between the anatomical descriptors of the cingulate cortex (surface area, mean curvature-corrected thickness, and volume) and the performance of cognitive tasks such as Card Sort, Flanker, List Sort used as instruments to measure the executive functions of flexibility, inhibitory control, and working memory. We have performed this analysis in a cross-sectional sample of 899 healthy young subjects of the Human Connectome Project. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study using causal inference to explain the relationship between cingulate morphology and the performance of executive tasks in healthy subjects.