title: Speed-accuracy strategy regulations in prefrontal tumor patients.
abstract: The ability to flexibly switch between fast and accurate decisions is crucial in everyday life. Recent neuroimaging evidence suggested that left lateral prefrontal cortex plays a role in switching from a quick response strategy to an accurate one. However, the causal role of the left prefrontal cortex in this particular, non-verbal, strategy switch has never been demonstrated. To fill this gap, we administered a perceptual decision-making task to neuro-oncological prefrontal patients, in which the requirement to be quick or accurate changed randomly on a trial-by-trial basis. To directly assess hemispheric asymmetries in speed-accuracy regulation, patients were tested a few days before and a few days after surgical excision of a brain tumor involving either the left (N=13) or the right (N=12) lateral frontal brain region. A group of age- and education-matched healthy controls was also recruited. To gain more insight on the component processes implied in the task, performance data (accuracy and speed) were not only analyzed separately but also submitted to a diffusion model analysis. The main findings indicated that the left prefrontal patients were impaired in appropriately adopting stricter response criteria in speed-to-accuracy switching trials with respect to healthy controls and right prefrontal patients, who were not impaired in this condition. This study demonstrates that the prefrontal cortex in the left hemisphere is necessary for flexible behavioral regulations, in particular when setting stricter response criteria is required in order to successfully switch from a speedy strategy to an accurate one.
authors.affiliation: Neurosurgery Unit, Azienda Ospedaliero-Universitaria Santa Maria della Misericordia, Piazzale Santa Maria della Misericordia 15, 33100 Udine, Italy; Department of Human Sciences, University of Udine, via Petracco 8, 33100 Udine, Italy.
authors.forename: Fabio
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Campanella
authors.affiliation: Neurosurgery Unit, Azienda Ospedaliero-Universitaria Santa Maria della Misericordia, Piazzale Santa Maria della Misericordia 15, 33100 Udine, Italy.
authors.forename: Miran
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Skrap
authors.affiliation: Department of Neuroscience, University of Padova, Via Giustiniani, 5, 35128 Padova, Italy; Centro di Neuroscienze Cognitive, University of Padova, Via Giustiniani, 5, 35128 Padova, Italy. Electronic address: antonino.vallesi@unipd.it.
authors.forename: Antonino
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Vallesi
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D003657:Decision Making / Q000502:physiology*; D056344:Executive Function / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D007839:Functional Laterality; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D017397:Prefrontal Cortex / Q000473:pathology / Q000503:physiopathology*; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Brain tumor; Cognitive flexibility; Prefrontal cortex; Speed-accuracy trade off; Switching