Meta-analytic evidence for a superordinate cognitive control network subserving diverse executive functions

“…stimulus–response pairings, while the DLPFC is thought to support its ability to shift attentional focus according to the demands of the task at hand (Bunge, Hazeltine, Scanlon, Rosen, & Gabrieli, 2002; Bunge, Kahn, Wallis, Miller, & Wagner, 2003; Miller & Cohen, 2001; Posner & Petersen, 1990).”

“2 Ravizza and Carter (2008). 3 Luna et al.”

“Results of the combined analysis across domains showed that executive functions are indeed associated with increased activity in this common cognitive control network (Bellebaum & Daum, 2007; Botvinick et al., 2001; Carter et al., 1999; Cohen et al., 2000; D’Esposito & Postle, 2002; Yarkoni et al., 2005), which includ…”

“Through increased understanding of the function of modular components within this network, along with their anatomical connections and functional interactions, we will be able to more effectively investigate the mechanisms by which aberrant behavior or clinical symptoms may result from dysfunction in individual region…”

“Activation likelihood estimation has been has been used to address similar research questions in both healthy and patient samples (Binder, Desai, Graves, & Conant, 2009; Caspers, Zilles, Laird, & Eickhoff, 2010; Chouinard & Goodale, 2010; Dickstein, Bannon, Castellanos, & Milham, 2006; Fusar-Poli et al., 2009; Glahn e…”

“According to this view, cognitive control mechanisms support the range of executive functions, including working memory, selective attention, stimulus–response mapping, and performance monitoring (Carter et al., 1998; Cohen, Dunbar, & McClelland, 1990; Miyake & Shah, 1999; Shallice, 1988), and are not restricted to a…”

“Numerous meta-analyses of the neuroimaging literature have confirmed the dACC’s involvement in controldemanding tasks (Nee et al., 2007; Niendam et al., 2012; Ridderinkhof et al., 2004; Shackman et al., 2011), and these have been supplemented by evidence of a causal relationship between dACC and…”

“‘s [137] meta-analytic study of 193 neuroimaging fMRI studies of EF showed broad patterns of activation across the lateral and medial PFC, including regions BA-9 and BA-46 (dlPFC) and BA-32 (rostral ACC), as well as both superior and inferior regions of the parietal lobes for tasks with predominantly working memory, f…”

“Thus, despite a close relation to EF, cognitive control is narrower than EF with a particular emphasis on resource allocation, information maintenance (working memory), and executive attention, rather than complex cognition (Botvinick & Cohen, 2014; Niendam et al., 2012).”

“Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 107(25):11163–11170.”

“…in reward and motivation, effortbased decision making, and cognitive control function dorsal anterior cingulate and presupplementary cortices, dorsal premotor cortex, the anterior insula, and the intraparietal cortex (Cole & Schneider 2007, Duncan 2010, Niendam et al. 2012, Power & Petersen 2013).”

“The frontoparietal control network plays a central role in goal-directed cognition (Niendam et al., 2012).”

“We have demonstrated that a third, spatially interposed, “frontoparietal control” network (Niendam et al., 2012; Vincent, Kahn, Snyder, Raichle, & Buckner, 2008) plays a role in goal-directed cognition by flexibly coupling with either the default or dorsal attention network (Spreng & Schacter,…”

“…increased demands on moment-to-moment adjustments are associated with phasic activity in midcingulate and anterior insula (Wilk et al. 2012) is (Niendam et al. 2012). d Fronto-parietal network (yellow) (Gordon et al. 2017c) consistent with the conceptualization of the midcingulo-insular…”

“…a scaffold for the many reviews on executive function literature (e.g., Bardikoff & Sabbagh, 2017; Best & Miller, 2010; Best et al., 2009; Collette et al., 2006; Garon et al., 2008; Müller & Kerns, 2015; Niendam et al., 2012), where these three factors are often those most extensively discussed.”

“Third, evidence from ERPs and a corpus of additional findings from fMRI studies (Banich, 2009; Niendam et al., 2012; Shackman et al., 2011; Shenhav et al., 2013; Silton et al., 2011; Silton et al., 2010) show that ACC is involved in conflictmonitoring and that ACC-mediatedmonitoring, and…”

“Related Neuroimaging Meta-Analyses The present work builds on prior meta-analyses that have investigated functional specialization (e.g., Rottschy et al. 2012; Clos et al. 2013) and flexibility (e.g., Binder et al. 2009; Shackman et al. 2011; Niendam et al. 2012) in the human brain.”

“…roles in EF skills, they play these roles only as parts of more complex networks (and networks of networks) that also involve regions outside the PFC—including the targets of top-down modulation, such as the striatum, the amygdala, and other parts of the limbic system (e.g., Niendam et al. 2012).”

“Importantly, the canonical pattern is observed not only at the single task level, but also the individual level, suggesting that the patterns observed at group (Duncan and Owen, 2000) and meta-analytic levels (Müller et al., 2015; Niendam et al., 2012) are not artifacts of aggregating findings.”

“…pattern of activation in the lateral PFC, dorsal ACC, and parietal cortex across major cold EF domains (working memory, inhibition, flexibility, and planning) (Niendam et al., 2012), indicating that cold EFs are supported by this cognitive control network with the DLPFC as a key region (Figure 2).”

“When people exert reflective control, they typically engage a system of brain regions that includes lateral prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate cortex (Niendam et al., 2012).”

“It thereby plays a key role in supporting goal-directed thought and action (for meta-analytic neuroimaging evidence of a common cognitive control network, see Niendam et al., 2012).”

“The Executive Control Network facilitates attention, allowing people to hold information in mind, shift strategies or approaches as necessary, and focus on the completion of goal-directed tasks (Beaty, Benedek, Kaufman, & Silvia, 2015; Niendam et al., 2012; Seeley et al., 2007).”

“central cognitive functions (Duncan and Owen, 2000; Miller, 2000; Badre and D’Esposito, 2009; Niendam et al., 2012; Passingham and Wise, 2012), the patients may be so generally impaired”

“Large-scale intrinsic and task-evoked circuits identified in the extant literature Abbreviations: ACC, Anterior Cingulate Cortex; AG, Angular Gyrus; aI, Anterior Insula, aIPL, Anterior Inferior Parietal Lobule; amPFC, Anterior Medial Prefrontal Cortex; dACC, Dorsal Anterior Cingulate Cortex; DLPFC*, Dorsolateral Prefr…”

“…that the performance of executive tasks is associated with activation in a large set of brain regions, involving prefrontal and parietal areas, motor regions, as well as subcortical structures, such as basal ganglia and thalamus (Duncan and Owen, 2000; Dosenbach et al., 2008; Niendam et al., 2012).”

“The connectivity profile of the anterior/medial-dorsal thalamus bears a striking resemblance to the fronto-parietal or executive control network that has been linked to a range of higher cognitive functions often impaired in psychotic disorders, including working memory, cognitive flexibility, initiation, and inhibiti…”

“In particular, the FPN is involved in a wide array of cognitively demanding tasks that require the activemaintenance of task goals, particularly in the presence of interference and distraction (Niendam et al., 2012).”

“…long-maturing brain regions such as the lateral PFC and parietal cortex, which have been typically related to a series of cognitive control functions (e.g., response inhibition, relational reasoning, working memory, and learning) (Crone 2009; Luna et al., 2010; Niendam et al., 2012; Diamond, 2013).”

“A recent meta-analysis of over 190 functional neuroimaging studies concluded that the thalamus is part of a superordinate prefrontal-cingulo-parietal “executive control” network that supports WM and executive functions, including cognitive flexibility, initiation, and inhibition (Niendam et al., 2012).”

“, 2010) during the maintenance of set and monitoring of performance (Niendam et al., 2012; Power and Petersen, 2013), with slightly more dorsal frontoparietal regions being more engaged by task set selection and initiation (Power and Petersen, 2013).”

“The CCN is primarily involved in top-down executive functions [48].”

“…mainly in the frontal and parietal lobes that connect during task processing to constitute a network (Fox et al., 2005a, 2009; Vincent et al., 2007; Niendam et al., 2012; Duncan, 2013; Fedorenko et al., 2013; Cole et al., 2014), what is not clear is, however, the nature of the cognitive tasks that…”

“N: 0006-3223 Biolo subcortical node in a fronto-cingulo-parietal executive control network that supports working memory, cognitive flexibility, and inhibition (13).”

“…in keeping with a recent animal study (Cutando et al. 2013) suggesting a role in encoding expectation of reward, the growing understanding of the reciprocal connections between cerebellum and basal ganglia (Niendam et al. 2012) and cerebellar involvement in addiction (Moulton et al. 2014).”

“As expected, we found larger activity in the middle/superior frontal gyrus, one of the main regions of the fronto-parietal control network [Niendam et al., 2012; Spreng et al., 2013; Vincent et al., 2008], during directed EFT compared to mind-wandering.”

“We fi rst discuss the literature on brain areasinvolved in inhibition in general and then provide an overview of fMRI studies on language switching in particular.”

“…development of abilities specific to each single executive function, possibly because the prefrontal cortex (a region of the brain that is commonly implicated in executive functioning, Niendam et al., 2012) has become functionally organised into fractionated systems by this age (Tsujimoto).”

“ported by a superordinate cognitive control network, including parietal regions (Niendam et al. 2012).”

“Cognitive control (CC) and working memory (WM) rely on neural processing within a common set of brain regions encompassing dorsomedial prefrontal, lateral prefrontal, and superior parietal regions of the human cortex (Fedorenko et al., 2013; Harding et al., in press; Niendam et al., 2012).”

“This network is similar to the fronto-parietal control network [93]: a neural system that is important in engaging controlled processing across a wide range of different external tasks”

“…fronto-cingulo-parietal network is known to be involved in attention and executive function processes (Miller and Cohen, 2001; Duncan, 2010; Niendam et al. , 2012; Petersen and Posner, 2012; Fedorenko et al. , 2013; Power and Petersen, 2013) but little is known about the structural…”

“…flexibility, and working memory components in their studies of cognitive control, the authors conflated inhibition and distractor interference control into one domain, combining GNG with Simon, flanker, and Stroop studies, and thus does not completely serve our purposes (Niendam et al., 2012).”

“, 2008), the superordinate cognitive control network (Niendam et al., 2012), the task-positive network (Fox et al.”

“, the dorsal attention system) or internal channels of information (the default network) (Vincent et al., 2008; Niendam et al., 2012; Spreng et al., 2013).”

“Regions that showed increased activity during process simulations compared with outcome simulations pertained to both the frontoparietal control and the default network (see Table 3 and Figure 3): bilateral aIPL, anterior insula, dlPFC, PCu and MFG make up the frontoparietal control network (Vincent et al., 2008; Spre…”

“Of note, a recruitment of prefrontal areas, involved in many cognitive functions (Niendam et al., 2012), was inevitable during DS and, in general, during sleep deprivation, which can be regarded as a self-control task per se.”

“EF relies heavily on the prefrontal cortex (PFC), although EF tasks also recruit broader neural networks, including posterior cortical and subcortical areas, and connectivity between these regions (e.g., for review, see Niendam et al., 2012).”

“…recognized that the thalamus plays a prominent role in cortico-cortical communication (Sherman, 2007, 2016) and higher-order processes such as cognition, emotion, and the coordination of sensory information (Kastner et al. 2006; Nishio et al. 2011; Niendam et al. 2012; Watanabe & Funahashi, 2012).”

“Increased activity in these regions during WM tasks is typically associated with increased performance (Smith and Jonides, 1999; D’Esposito et al., 2000; Miller and Cohen, 2001; Nee et al., 2012; Niendam et al., 2012; Rottschy et al., 2012).”

“Given the pivotal role of the DLPFC in mediating a wide range of executive functions (Niendam et al., 2012), this region can be the anodal region of interest.”

“The frontoparietal regions recruited during cognitive reappraisal are broadly involved in cognitive control (51,52) and include multiple prefrontal regions in both dorsal and ventral areas, the dorsal anterior cingulate, as well as posterior association cortex encompassing inferior parietal sulcus (31,34,50,53–57).”

“These include the attention, salience, and cognitive control networks (Dajani and Uddin, 2015) that are composed of frontal, insular, cingulate, and parietal regions (Niendam et al., 2012) engaged during working memory, interference control, and cognitive flexibility (Diamond, 2013).”

“…of the anterior cingulate cortex and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (Cohen et al., 1990; Botvinick et al., 1999, 2001; Carter et al., 1999; Niendam et al., 2012), while stopping is mainly associated with activation of the rIFG; ventrolateral prefrontal cortex and the presupplementary…”

“These functions are not restricted to a particular cognitive domain but serve as a general cognitive control process allocating top-down attentional resources to organize cognitive operations (Fassbender et al., 2006; Cole and Schneider, 2007; Niendam et al., 2012).”