Functional specialization in the human frontal cortex observed during task anticipation.
The purpose was to evaluate whether a scalp-recorded slow potential will show specificity during the anticipation of different types of visual tasks. One of the tasks required the comparison of pairs of familiar faces, and the other was the comparison of abstract dotted patterns. Each trial began with one of the two cues (S1) followed by consecutive pictures (S2 and S3). Faces and patterns were superimposed, and the switching between tasks depended on the cue. The ERP analysis was done for the time window between S1 (cue) and S2 presentations. The major differences between tasks were found in the anterior scalp regions starting at 700 ms from S1 onset. During Pattern task anticipation, the proposed sources in the right frontal area were more anterior, inferior and lateral than those in Face task. The task-specific slow electric potentials may indicate the functional specialization for attentive anticipation in the human frontal lobe.
D000328:Adult; D001931:Brain Mapping; D003265:Contingent Negative Variation / Q000502:physiology*; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005074:Evoked Potentials, Visual / Q000502:physiology; D005145:Face; D005260:Female; D005625:Frontal Lobe / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008606:Mental Processes; D008875:Middle Aged; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011930:Reaction Time; D012535:Scalp