Subcortical contributions to multitasking and response inhibition.
The involvement of the prefrontal cortex in executive control has been well established. It is, however, as yet unclear whether the basal ganglia and the cerebellum as components of frontostriatal/frontocerebellar networks also contribute to the executive domains multitasking and response inhibition. To investigate this issue, groups of patients with selective vascular lesions of the basal ganglia (n=13) or the cerebellum (n=14) were compared with matched healthy control groups. Several paradigms assessing the ability to process concurrent visual and auditory input and to simultaneously perform verbal and manual responses as well as the inhibition of habitual or newly acquired response tendencies were administered. Basal ganglia patients showed marked response slowing during coordination of sensory input from different modalities and high error rates during the inhibition of overlearned responses. There was no clear evidence of a cerebellar involvement in multitasking or response suppression. Taken together, the findings provided evidence for a striatal involvement in both multitasking and response inhibition, emphasizing the functional implication of subcortical components in frontostriatal circuits.
Thoma
Patrizia
P
Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, Department of Neuropsychology, Faculty of Psychology, Ruhr-University of Bochum, Universitätsstrasse 150, 44780 Bochum, Germany. patrizia.thoma@rub.de
Koch
Benno
B
Heyder
Katrin
K
Schwarz
Michael
M
Daum
Irene
I
D000368:Aged; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D001479:Basal Ganglia / Q000503:physiopathology*; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D002531:Cerebellum / Q000503:physiopathology*; D002755:Choice Behavior / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007266:Inhibition, Psychological; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D011340:Problem Solving / Q000502:physiology; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology*; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D014652:Vascular Diseases / Q000473:pathology*; D014785:Vision, Ocular / Q000502:physiology