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

Research output: Contribution to journalResearch articleContributedpeer-review

Contributors

  • Christoph Felix Geissler - , Trier University (Author)
  • Lars-Michael Schöpper - , Trier University (Author)
  • Anna Franziska Engesser - , Trier University (Author)
  • Christian Beste - , Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy (Author)
  • Alexander Münchau - , University of Lübeck, Universitätsklinikum Schleswig-Holstein - Campus Lübeck (Author)
  • Christian Frings - , Trier University, Medical Faculty Carl Gustav Carus (Author)

Abstract

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. Yet, it is possible to observe binding effects in such when location features have to be translated into response features. We hypothesized that this modulation of binding effects is reflected in task involvement of the dorsolateral pFC (DLPFC). Participants localized targets with either direct (i.e., spatially compatible key) or translated (i.e., diagonally opposite to the spatially compatible key) responses. We measured DLPFC activity with functional near-infrared spectroscopy. On the behavioral level, we observed binding effects in the translated response condition, but not in the direct response condition. Importantly, prefrontal activity was also higher in the translated mapping condition. In addition, we found some evidence for the strength of the difference in binding effects in behavioral data being correlated with the corresponding effects in prefrontal activity. This suggests that activity in the DLPFC reflects the amount of executive control needed for translating location features into responses. More generally, binding effects seem to emerge only when the task at hand involves DLPFC recruitment.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)95-106
Number of pages12
JournalJournal of Cognitive Neuroscience
Volume36
Issue number1
Publication statusPublished - 12 Oct 2023
Peer-reviewedYes

External IDs

ORCID /0000-0002-2989-9561/work/147142589
Mendeley c11ceb05-0cb1-3395-85af-bbb9fec6471d
unpaywall 10.1162/jocn_a_02071
Scopus 85179127384
dblp journals/jocn/GeisslerSEBMF24

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