Scholars@Duke
Tobias Egner

Tobias Egner CV

Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience
Psychology & Neuroscience
tobias.egner@duke.edu
Duke Box 90999, Durham, NC 27708-0999
LSRC B246, Durham, NC 27708
CV

Selected Publications

Contextual control demands determine whether stability and flexibility trade off against each other.

Journal Article Attention, perception & psychophysics · October 2024 Cognitive stability, the ability to focus on a current task, and cognitive flexibility, the ability to switch between different tasks, are traditionally conceptualized as opposing end-points on a one-dimensional continuum. This assumption obligates a stabi ... Full text Cite

Effects of Context Changes on Memory Reactivation.

Journal Article The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · September 2024 While the influence of context on long-term memory (LTM) is well documented, its effects on the interaction between working memory (WM) and LTM remain less understood. In this study, we explored these interactions using a delayed match-to-sample task, wher ... Full text Cite

Reply to ‘Flexibility and stability can be both dependent and independent’

Journal Article Nature Reviews Psychology · September 1, 2024 Full text Cite

Toward an integrative account of internal and external determinants of event segmentation.

Journal Article Psychon Bull Rev · April 2024 Our daily experiences unfold continuously, but we remember them as a series of discrete events through a process called event segmentation. Prominent theories of event segmentation suggest that event boundaries in memory are triggered by significant shifts ... Full text Link to item Cite

One-shot stimulus-control associations generalize over different stimulus viewpoints and exemplars.

Journal Article Memory & cognition · April 2024 Cognitive control processes are central to adaptive behavior, but how control is applied in a context-appropriate manner is not fully understood. One way to produce context-sensitive control is by mnemonically linking particular control settings to specifi ... Full text Cite

Learning Cognitive Flexibility: Neural Substrates of Adapting Switch-Readiness to Time-varying Demands.

Journal Article Journal of cognitive neuroscience · February 2024 An individual's readiness to switch tasks (cognitive flexibility) varies over time, in part, as the result of reinforcement learning based on the statistical structure of the world around them. Consequently, the behavioral cost associated with task-switchi ... Full text Cite

The reactivation of task rules triggers the reactivation of task-relevant items.

Journal Article Cortex; a journal devoted to the study of the nervous system and behavior · February 2024 Working memory (WM) describes the temporary storage of task-relevant items and procedural rules to guide action. Despite its central importance for goal-directed behavior, the interplay between WM and long-term memory (LTM) remains poorly understood. Recen ... Full text Cite

Insights into control over cognitive flexibility from studies of task-switching.

Journal Article Current opinion in behavioral sciences · February 2024 Cognitive flexibility denotes the ability to disengage from a current task and shift one's focus to a different activity. An individual's level of flexibility is not fixed; rather, people adapt their readiness to switch tasks to changing circumstances. We ... Full text Cite

Beyond stimulus-response rules: Task sets incorporate information about performance difficulty.

Journal Article Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition · February 2024 The capacity for goal-directed behavior relies on the generation and implementation of task sets. While task sets are traditionally defined as mnemonic ensembles linking task goals to stimulus-response mappings, we here asked the question whether they may ... Full text Cite

Heuristic satisficing inferential decision making in human and robot active perception.

Journal Article Frontiers in robotics and AI · January 2024 Inferential decision-making algorithms typically assume that an underlying probabilistic model of decision alternatives and outcomes may be learned a priori or online. Furthermore, when applied to robots in real-world settings they often perform uns ... Full text Cite

Principles of cognitive control over task focus and task switching.

Journal Article Nature reviews psychology · November 2023 Adaptive behaviour requires the ability to focus on a task and protect it from distraction (cognitive stability) and to rapidly switch tasks when circumstances change (cognitive flexibility). Burgeoning research literatures have aimed to understand how peo ... Full text Cite

When the mind's eye prevails: The Internal Dominance over External Attention (IDEA) hypothesis.

Journal Article Psychonomic bulletin & review · October 2023 Throughout the 20th century, the psychological literature has considered attention as being primarily directed at the outside world. More recent theories conceive attention as also operating on internal information, and mounting evidence suggests a single, ... Full text Cite

Target detection does not influence temporal memory.

Journal Article Attention, perception & psychophysics · August 2023 Target detection has been found to enhance memory for concurrently presented stimuli under dual-task conditions. This "attentional boost effect" is reminiscent of findings in the event memory literature, where conditions giving rise to event boundaries hav ... Full text Cite

Task sets define boundaries of learned cognitive flexibility in list-wide proportion switch manipulations.

Journal Article Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance · August 2023 Different contexts in daily life often require varying levels of cognitive flexibility. Previous research has shown that people adapt their level of flexibility to match changing contextual demands for task switching in cued-switching paradigms that vary t ... Full text Cite

The Neural Correlates of Updating and Gating in Procedural Working Memory.

Journal Article Journal of cognitive neuroscience · June 2023 Goal-directed behavior relies on maintaining relevant goals in working memory (WM) and updating them when required. Computational modeling, behavioral, and neuroimaging work has previously identified the processes and brain regions involved in selecting, u ... Full text Cite

Context-independent scaling of neural responses to task difficulty in the multiple-demand network.

Journal Article Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · May 2023 The multiple-demand (MD) network is sensitive to many aspects of cognitive demand, showing increased activation with more difficult tasks. However, it is currently unknown whether the MD network is modulated by the context in which task difficulty is exper ... Full text Cite

Transfer of Learned Cognitive Flexibility to Novel Stimuli and Task Sets.

Journal Article Psychological science · April 2023 Adaptive behavior requires learning about the structure of one's environment to derive optimal action policies, and previous studies have documented transfer of such structural knowledge to bias choices in new environments. Here, we asked whether people co ... Full text Cite

No need to choose: Independent regulation of cognitive stability and flexibility challenges the stability-flexibility trade-off.

Journal Article Journal of experimental psychology. General · December 2022 Adaptive behavior requires the ability to focus on a current task and protect it from distraction (cognitive stability), as well as the ability to rapidly switch to another task in light of changing circumstances (cognitive flexibility). Cogn ... Full text Cite

Hippocampal convergence during anticipatory midbrain activation promotes subsequent memory formation.

Journal Article Nat Commun · November 7, 2022 The hippocampus has been a focus of memory research since H.M's surgery abolished his ability to form new memories, yet its mechanistic role in memory remains debated. Here, we identify a candidate memory mechanism: an anticipatory hippocampal "convergence ... Full text Link to item Cite

Retrieval context determines whether event boundaries impair or enhance temporal order memory.

Journal Article Cognition · August 2022 Meaningful changes in context create "event boundaries", segmenting continuous experience into distinct episodes in memory. A foundational finding in this literature is that event boundaries impair memory for the temporal order of stimuli spanning a bounda ... Full text Cite

Distinct but correlated latent factors support the regulation of learned conflict-control and task-switching.

Journal Article Cognitive psychology · June 2022 Cognitive control is guided by learning, as people adjust control to meet changing task demands. The two best-studied instances of "control-learning" are the enhancement of attentional task focus in response to increased frequencies of incongruent distract ... Full text Cite

Stimulus variability and task relevance modulate binding-learning.

Journal Article Attention, perception & psychophysics · May 2022 Classical theories of attention posit that integration of features into object representation (or feature binding) requires engagement of focused attention. Studies challenging this idea have demonstrated that feature binding can happen outside of the focu ... Full text Cite

Switching task sets creates event boundaries in memory.

Journal Article Cognition · April 2022 People segregate continuously unfolding experiences into discrete events in memory. This process, known as event segmentation, results in better memory for the temporal order of experiences within an event and expands subjective temporal distance for items ... Full text Cite

Learning from mistakes: Incidental encoding reveals a time-dependent enhancement of posterror target processing.

Journal Article Journal of experimental psychology. General · March 2022 It has been known for >50 years that making an error leads to subsequent changes in performance, yet the exact nature of posterror adjustments in cognition remains debated. We posit that this is in large part due to traditional performance indices, like me ... Full text Cite

Neural Dynamics of Context-sensitive Adjustments in Cognitive Flexibility.

Journal Article J Cogn Neurosci · February 1, 2022 To adaptively interact with the uncertainties of daily life, we must match our level of cognitive flexibility to situations that place different demands on our ability to focus on the current task while remaining sensitive to cues that signal other, more u ... Full text Link to item Cite

Assessing the Durability of One-Shot Stimulus-Control Bindings.

Journal Article Journal of cognition · January 2022 It has been proposed that cognitive control processes may be implemented in a contextually appropriate manner through the encoding, and cued retrieval, of associations between stimuli and the control processes that were active during their encoding, formin ... Full text Cite

Mind wandering at encoding, but not at retrieval, disrupts one-shot stimulus-control learning.

Journal Article Attention, perception & psychophysics · October 2021 The one-shot pairing of a stimulus with a specific cognitive control process, such as task switching, can bind the two together in memory. The episodic control-binding hypothesis posits that the formation of temporary stimulus-control bindings, which are h ... Full text Cite

Appealing to the cognitive miser: Using demand avoidance to modulate cognitive flexibility in cued and voluntary task switching.

Journal Article Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance · October 2021 Current cognitive control accounts view goal-directed behavior as striking a balance between two antagonistic control demands: Stability, on the one hand, reflects a rigid, focused state of control and flexibility, while on the other, reflects a relaxed, d ... Full text Cite

Minimal impact of consolidation on learned switch-readiness.

Journal Article Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition · October 2021 Adaptive behavior is characterized by our ability to create, maintain, and update (or switch) rules by which we categorize and respond to stimuli across changing contexts (cognitive flexibility). Recent research suggests that people can link the con ... Full text Cite

Evaluating the learning of stimulus-control associations through incidental memory of reinforcement events.

Journal Article Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition · October 2021 Cognitive control describes the ability to use internal goals to strategically guide how we process and respond to our environment. Changes in the environment lead to adaptation in control strategies. This type of control learning can be observed in perfor ... Full text Cite

The many faces of learning-guided cognitive control.

Journal Article Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition · October 2021 The guiding question of this special issue is how people learn to adapt control in a context-sensitive manner ("control learning"). Broadly speaking, the hypothesis probed by the articles herein is that this occurs via learning about regularities in the (t ... Full text Cite

Neural Dynamics of Conflict Control in Working Memory.

Journal Article J Cogn Neurosci · September 1, 2021 Attention and working memory (WM) have classically been considered as two separate cognitive functions, but more recent theories have conceptualized them as operating on shared representations and being distinguished primarily by whether attention is direc ... Full text Link to item Cite

Evidence for a single mechanism gating perceptual and long-term memory information into working memory.

Journal Article Cognition · July 2021 An influential view of working memory (WM) holds that its contents are controlled by a selective gating mechanism that allows for relevant perceptual information to enter WM when opened, but shields WM contents from interference when closed. In support of ... Full text Cite

Hemisphere-specific Parietal Contributions to the Interplay between Working Memory and Attention.

Journal Article Journal of cognitive neuroscience · July 2021 To achieve our moment-to-moment goals, we must often keep information temporarily in mind. Yet, this working memory (WM) may compete with demands for our attention in the environment. Attentional and WM functions are thought to operate by similar underlyin ... Full text Cite

Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex Drives the Prioritization of Self-Associated Stimuli in Working Memory.

Journal Article The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · March 2021 Humans show a pervasive bias for processing self- over other-related information, including in working memory (WM), where people prioritize the maintenance of self- (over other-) associated cues. To elucidate the neural mechanisms underlying this self-bias ... Full text Cite

Neural Substrates of Working Memory Updating.

Journal Article Journal of cognitive neuroscience · December 2020 Working memory (WM) needs to protect current content from interference and simultaneously be amenable to rapid updating with newly relevant information. An influential model suggests these opposing requirements are met via a BG-thalamus gating mechanism th ... Full text Cite

More efficient shielding for internal than external attention? Evidence from asymmetrical switch costs.

Journal Article Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance · September 2020 At present, the process of switching attention between external stimuli and internal representations is not well understood. To address this, Verschooren, Liefooghe, Brass, and Pourtois (2019) recently designed a novel paradigm where participants were cued ... Full text Cite

Contextual Adaptation of Cognitive Flexibility is driven by Task- and Item-Level Learning.

Journal Article Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · August 2020 Adaptive behavior requires finding, and adjusting, an optimal tradeoff between focusing on a current task-set (cognitive stability) and updating that task-set when the environment changes (cognitive flexibility). Such dynamic adjustments of cognitive flexi ... Full text Cite

Memories of control: One-shot episodic learning of item-specific stimulus-control associations.

Journal Article Cognition · June 2020 The repeated pairing of a particular stimulus with a specific cognitive control process, such as task switching, can bind the two together in memory, resulting in the formation of stimulus-control associations. These bindings are thought to guide the conte ... Full text Cite

Declarative and procedural working memory updating processes are mutually facilitative.

Journal Article Attention, perception & psychophysics · May 2020 Executive function, or cognitive control, describes the ability to guide information processing in line with internal goals, but the nature of-and relationship between-the component processes supporting this ability remains poorly understood. Two key compo ... Full text Cite

Neural Mechanisms of Strategic Adaptation in Attentional Flexibility.

Journal Article Journal of cognitive neuroscience · May 2020 Individuals are able to adjust their readiness to shift spatial attention, referred to as "attentional flexibility," according to the changing demands of the environment, but the neural mechanisms underlying learned adjustments in flexibility are unknown. ... Full text Cite

Performance feedback promotes proactive but not reactive adaptation of conflict-control.

Journal Article Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance · April 2020 Cognitive control refers to the use of internal goals to guide how we process stimuli, and control can be applied proactively (in anticipation of a stimulus) or reactively (once that stimulus has been presented). The application of control can be guided by ... Full text Cite

Disentangling the Roles of Cue Visibility and Knowledge in Adjusting Cognitive Control: A Preregistered Direct Replication of the Farooqui and Manly (2015) Study.

Journal Article Psychological science · April 2020 Recent research suggests that people can learn to link the control process of task switching to predictive cues so that switch costs are attenuated following informative precues of switch likelihood. However, the precise conditions that shape such contextu ... Full text Cite

Item-specific priming of voluntary task switches.

Journal Article Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance · April 2020 The ability to switch efficiently between different tasks underpins cognitive flexibility and is impaired in various psychiatric disorders. Recent research has suggested that the control processes mediating switching can be subject to learning, because "sw ... Full text Cite

Cognitive overcontrol as a trait marker in anorexia nervosa? Aberrant task- and response-set switching in remitted patients.

Journal Article Journal of abnormal psychology · November 2019 Individuals with anorexia nervosa (AN) often present inflexible behaviors and rigid thinking styles, which may contribute to disorder maintenance. Studies of set shifting have documented impairments in AN, but results have varied across samples. Moreover, ... Full text Cite

Measuring Adaptive Control in Conflict Tasks.

Journal Article Trends in cognitive sciences · September 2019 The past two decades have witnessed an explosion of interest in the cognitive and neural mechanisms of adaptive control processes that operate in selective attention tasks. This has spawned not only a large empirical literature and several theories but als ... Full text Cite

Probabilistic inferential decision-making under time pressure in rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta).

Journal Article Journal of comparative psychology (Washington, D.C. : 1983) · August 2019 Decisions often involve the consideration of multiple cues, each of which may inform selection on the basis of learned probabilities. Our ability to use probabilistic inference for decisions is bounded by uncertainty and constraints such as time pressure. ... Full text Open Access Cite

Neural Dynamics of Cognitive Control over Working Memory Capture of Attention.

Journal Article J Cogn Neurosci · July 2019 The contents of working memory (WM) guide visual attention toward matching features, with visual search being faster when the target and a feature of an item held in WM spatially overlap (validly cued) than when they occur at different locations (invalidly ... Full text Link to item Cite

Cortical and subcortical contributions to context-control learning.

Journal Article Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · April 2019 "Cognitive control" describes our ability to strategically bias information processing in line with internal goals. Traditionally, research has focused on delineating the sources of top-down biasing, implicating the lateral prefrontal cortex. The past two ... Full text Cite

Human noise blindness drives suboptimal cognitive inference.

Journal Article Nature communications · April 2019 Humans typically make near-optimal sensorimotor judgements but show systematic biases when making more cognitive judgements. Here we test the hypothesis that, while humans are sensitive to the noise present during early sensory encoding, the "optimality ga ... Full text Cite

Automatic Prioritization of Self-Referential Stimuli in Working Memory.

Journal Article Psychological science · March 2019 People preferentially attend to external stimuli that are related to themselves compared with others. Whether a similar self-reference bias applies to internal representations, such as those maintained in working memory (WM), is presently unknown. We teste ... Full text Cite

Spontaneous Task Structure Formation Results in a Cost to Incidental Memory of Task Stimuli.

Journal Article Frontiers in psychology · January 2019 Humans are characterized by their ability to leverage rules for classifying and linking stimuli to context-appropriate actions. Previous studies have shown that when humans learn stimulus-response associations for two-dimensional stimuli, they implicitly f ... Full text Cite

Frequency of prospective use modulates instructed task-set interference.

Journal Article Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance · December 2018 Recent studies have demonstrated that keeping an instructed task set in working memory (WM) for prospective use can interfere with behavior on an intervening task that employs shared stimuli-the prospective task-set-interference effect. One open question i ... Full text Cite

Getting a grip on cognitive flexibility.

Journal Article Current directions in psychological science · December 2018 Cognitive flexibility refers to the ability to quickly reconfigure our mind, like when we switch between different tasks. This review highlights recent evidence showing that cognitive flexibility can be conditioned by simple incentives typically known to d ... Full text Cite

Processing overlap-dependent distractor dilution rather than perceptual target load determines attentional selectivity.

Journal Article Attention, perception & psychophysics · November 2018 The perceptual load theory of attentional selection argues that the degree to which distractors interfere with target processing is determined by the "perceptual load" (or discrimination difficulty) of target processing: when perceptual load is low, distra ... Full text Cite

Integrated externally and internally generated task predictions jointly guide cognitive control in prefrontal cortex.

Journal Article eLife · August 2018 Cognitive control proactively configures information processing to suit expected task demands. Predictions of forthcoming demand can be driven by explicit external cues or be generated internally, based on past experience (cognitive history). However, it i ... Full text Cite

Cognitive control over prospective task-set interference.

Journal Article Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance · May 2018 Recent studies have demonstrated that maintaining task-sets in working memory (WM) for prospective implementation can interfere with performance on an intervening task when the same stimulus requires incompatible responses in the ongoing versus the prospec ... Full text Cite

Control by association: Transfer of implicitly primed attentional states across linked stimuli.

Journal Article Psychonomic bulletin & review · April 2018 Although cognitive control has traditionally been viewed in opposition to associative learning, recent studies show that people can learn to link particular stimuli with specific cognitive control states (e.g., high attentional selectivity). Here, we teste ... Full text Cite

Causal Evidence for Learning-Dependent Frontal Lobe Contributions to Cognitive Control.

Journal Article The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · January 2018 The lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC) plays a central role in the prioritization of sensory input based on task relevance. Such top-down control of perception is of fundamental importance in goal-directed behavior, but can also be costly when deployed exces ... Full text Cite

Cueing cognitive flexibility: Item-specific learning of switch readiness.

Journal Article Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance · December 2017 The rich behavioral repertoire of the human species derives from our ability to flexibly reconfigure processing strategies (task sets) in response to changing requirements. This updating of task sets is effortful, as reflected by longer response times when ... Full text Cite

Neural Representation of Working Memory Content Is Modulated by Visual Attentional Demand.

Journal Article Journal of cognitive neuroscience · December 2017 Recent theories assert that visual working memory (WM) relies on the same attentional resources and sensory substrates as visual attention to external stimuli. Behavioral studies have observed competitive tradeoffs between internal (i.e., WM) and external ... Full text Cite

Probabilistic inference under time pressure leads to a cortical-to-subcortical shift in decision evidence integration

Journal Article NeuroImage · November 15, 2017 Real-life decision-making often involves combining multiple probabilistic sources of information under finite time and cognitive resources. To mitigate these pressures, people “satisfice”, foregoing a full evaluation of all available evidence to focus on a ... Full text Open Access Cite

Dynamic Trial-by-Trial Recoding of Task-Set Representations in the Frontoparietal Cortex Mediates Behavioral Flexibility.

Journal Article The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · November 2017 Cognitive flexibility forms the core of the extraordinary ability of humans to adapt, but the precise neural mechanisms underlying our ability to nimbly shift between task sets remain poorly understood. Recent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) s ... Full text Cite

Decoding working memory content from attentional biases.

Journal Article Psychon Bull Rev · August 2017 What we are currently thinking influences where we attend. The finding that active maintenance of visual items in working memory (WM) biases attention toward memory-matching objects-even when WM content is irrelevant for attentional goals-suggests a tight ... Full text Link to item Cite

Hierarchically Organized Medial Frontal Cortex-Basal Ganglia Loops Selectively Control Task- and Response-Selection.

Journal Article The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · August 2017 Adaptive behavior requires context-sensitive configuration of task-sets that specify time-varying stimulus-response mappings. Intriguingly, response time costs associated with changing task-sets and motor responses are known to be strongly interactive: swi ... Full text Cite

The Wiley Handbook of Cognitive Control

Book · March 20, 2017 Covering basic theory, new research, and intersections with adjacent fields, this is the first comprehensive reference work on cognitive control – our ability to use internal goals to guide thought and behavior. ... Cite

The Role of Anterior Cingulate Cortex in the Affective Evaluation of Conflict.

Journal Article Journal of cognitive neuroscience · January 2017 An influential theory of ACC function argues that this brain region plays a crucial role in the affective evaluation of performance monitoring and control demands. Specifically, control-demanding processes such as response conflict are thought to be regist ... Full text Cite

Monitoring Demands for Executive Control: Shared Functions between Human and Nonhuman Primates.

Journal Article Trends in neurosciences · January 2017 Fifteen years ago, an influential model proposed that the human dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) detects conflict and induces adaptive control of behavior. Over the years support for this model has been mixed, in particular due to divergent findings ... Full text Cite

The Caudate Nucleus Mediates Learning of Stimulus-Control State Associations.

Journal Article The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · January 2017 A longstanding dichotomy in cognitive psychology and neuroscience pits controlled, top-down driven behavior against associative, bottom-up driven behavior, where cognitive control processes allow us to override well-learned stimulus-response (S-R) associat ... Full text Cite

The caudate nucleus mediates learning of stimulus-control state associations.

Journal Article The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · December 15, 2016 A longstanding dichotomy in cognitive psychology and neuroscience pits controlled, top-down driven against associative, bottom-up driven behavior, where cognitive control processes allow us to override well-learned stimulus-response (S-R) associations. By ... Cite

Satisficing in split-second decision making is characterized by strategic cue discounting

Journal Article Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition · December 2016 Much of our real-life decision making is bounded by uncertain information, limitations in cognitive resources, and a lack of time to allocate to the decision process. It is thought that humans overcome these limitations through satisficing, fast but “good- ... Full text Open Access Cite

Visual Prediction Error Spreads Across Object Features in Human Visual Cortex.

Journal Article The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · December 2016 Visual cognition is thought to rely heavily on contextual expectations. Accordingly, previous studies have revealed distinct neural signatures for expected versus unexpected stimuli in visual cortex. However, it is presently unknown how the brain combines ... Full text Cite

Feature-Based Attention and Feature-Based Expectation.

Journal Article Trends in cognitive sciences · June 2016 Foreknowledge of target stimulus features improves visual search performance as a result of 'feature-based attention' (FBA). Recent studies have reported that 'feature-based expectation' (FBE) also heightens decision sensitivity. Superficially, it appears ... Full text Cite

Different levels of learning interact to shape the congruency sequence effect.

Journal Article Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition · April 2016 The congruency effect in distracter interference tasks is often reduced after incongruent relative to congruent trials. Moreover, this congruency sequence effect (CSE) is influenced by learning related to concrete stimulus and response features as well as ... Full text Cite

Center-Surround Inhibition in Working Memory.

Journal Article Current biology : CB · January 2016 Directing visual attention toward a particular feature or location in the environment suppresses processing of nearby stimuli [1-4]. Echoing the center-surround organization of retinal ganglion cell receptive fields [5], and biasing of competitive local ne ... Full text Cite

Distractor-relevance determines whether task-switching enhances or impairs distractor memory.

Journal Article Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance · January 2016 Richter and Yeung (2012) recently documented a novel task-switching effect, a switch-induced reduction in "memory selectivity," characterized by relatively enhanced memory for distractor stimuli and impaired memory for target stimuli encountered on switch ... Full text Cite

Reduced Risk-Taking following Disruption of the Intraparietal Sulcus.

Journal Article Frontiers in neuroscience · January 2016 Decision makers frequently encounter opportunities to pursue great gains-assuming they are willing to accept greater risks. Previous neuroimaging studies have shown that activity in the intraparietal sulcus (IPS) and the inferior frontal junction (IFJ) are ... Full text Cite

(No) time for control: Frontal theta dynamics reveal the cost of temporally guided conflict anticipation.

Journal Article Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · December 2015 During situations of response conflict, cognitive control is characterized by prefrontal theta-band (3- to 8-Hz) activity. It has been shown that cognitive control can be triggered proactively by contextual cues that predict conflict. Here, we investigated ... Full text Cite

Memory Meets Control in Hippocampal and Striatal Binding of Stimuli, Responses, and Attentional Control States.

Journal Article The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · November 2015 The human brain encodes experience in an integrative fashion by binding together the various features of an event (i.e., stimuli and responses) into memory "event files." A subsequent reoccurrence of an event feature can then cue the retrieval of the memor ... Full text Cite

An insula-frontostriatal network mediates flexible cognitive control by adaptively predicting changing control demands.

Journal Article Nature communications · September 2015 The anterior cingulate and lateral prefrontal cortices have been implicated in implementing context-appropriate attentional control, but the learning mechanisms underlying our ability to flexibly adapt the control settings to changing environments remain p ... Full text Cite

Mind-reading without the scanner: Behavioural decoding of working memory content

Journal Article Visual Cognition · August 9, 2015 Sophisticated machine learning algorithms have been successfully applied to functional neuroimaging data in order to characterize internal cognitive states. But is it possible to “mind-read” without the scanner? Capitalizing on the robust finding that the ... Full text Cite

Emotional task management: neural correlates of switching between affective and non-affective task-sets.

Journal Article Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · August 2015 Although task-switching has been investigated extensively, its interaction with emotionally salient task content remains unclear. Prioritized processing of affective stimulus content may enhance accessibility of affective task-sets and generate increased i ... Full text Cite

Inhibition-Induced Forgetting Results from Resource Competition between Response Inhibition and Memory Encoding Processes.

Journal Article The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · August 2015 Response inhibition is a key component of executive control, but its relation to other cognitive processes is not well understood. We recently documented the "inhibition-induced forgetting effect": no-go cues are remembered more poorly than go cues. We att ... Full text Open Access Cite

Attentional guidance by working memory differs by paradigm: an individual-differences approach.

Journal Article Attention, perception & psychophysics · April 2015 The contents of working memory (WM) have been repeatedly found to guide the allocation of visual attention; in a dual-task paradigm that combines WM and visual search, actively holding an item in WM biases visual attention towards memory-matching items dur ... Full text Cite

Quality and accessibility of visual working memory during cognitive control of attentional guidance: A Bayesian model comparison approach

Journal Article Visual Cognition · March 16, 2015 Working memory (WM) can guide visual attention toward memory-matching objects. This influence of WM on attention can be modulated by cognitive control, such that attentional guidance is strategically suppressed or enhanced depending on whether WM contents ... Full text Cite

The congruency sequence effect emerges when the distracter precedes the target.

Journal Article Acta psychologica · March 2015 The congruency effect in distracter interference tasks is typically smaller when the previous trial was incongruent as compared to congruent, suggesting the operation of a control process that minimizes the influence of irrelevant stimuli on behavior. Howe ... Full text Cite

Neural conflict-control mechanisms improve memory for target stimuli.

Journal Article Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · March 2015 According to conflict-monitoring models, conflict serves as an internal signal for reinforcing top-down attention to task-relevant information. While evidence based on measures of ongoing task performance supports this idea, implications for long-term cons ... Full text Cite

Brain Mapping of Control Processes

Chapter · February 14, 2015 Full text Cite

Inhibition-induced forgetting: when more control leads to less memory.

Journal Article Psychological science · January 2015 The ability to inhibit prepotent responses is a core executive function, but the relation of response inhibition to other cognitive operations is poorly understood. In the study reported here, we examined inhibitory control through the lens of incidental m ... Full text Cite

Feature expectation heightens visual sensitivity during fine orientation discrimination.

Journal Article Journal of vision · January 2015 Attending to a stimulus enhances the sensitivity of perceptual decisions. However, it remains unclear how perceptual sensitivity varies according to whether a feature is expected or unexpected. Here, observers made fine discrimination judgments about the o ... Full text Cite

Dissociable causal roles for left and right parietal cortex in controlling attentional biases from the contents of working memory.

Journal Article NeuroImage · October 2014 The contents of working memory (WM) steer visual attention, but the extent of this guidance can be strategically enhanced or inhibited when WM content is reliably helpful or harmful to a visual task. Current understanding of the neural substrates mediating ... Full text Cite

Determinants of congruency sequence effects without learning and memory confounds.

Journal Article Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance · October 2014 A common finding in distracter interference (e.g., Flanker) tasks is that the difference in mean reaction time (RT) between incongruent and congruent trials-the congruency effect-is smaller when the previous trial was incongruent relative to congruent. Ove ... Full text Cite

Simultaneous transcranial magnetic stimulation and single-neuron recording in alert non-human primates.

Journal Article Nat Neurosci · August 2014 Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is a widely used, noninvasive method for stimulating nervous tissue, yet its mechanisms of effect are poorly understood. Here we report new methods for studying the influence of TMS on single neurons in the brain of ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

The working memory stroop effect: when internal representations clash with external stimuli.

Journal Article Psychological science · August 2014 Working memory (WM) has recently been described as internally directed attention, which implies that WM content should affect behavior exactly like an externally perceived and attended stimulus. We tested whether holding a color word in WM, rather than att ... Full text Cite

Thalamic control of human attention driven by memory and learning.

Journal Article Current biology : CB · May 2014 The role of the thalamus in high-level cognition-attention, working memory (WM), rule-based learning, and decision making-remains poorly understood, especially in comparison to that of cortical frontoparietal networks [1-3]. Studies of visual thalamus have ... Full text Cite

Comparing neural substrates of emotional vs. non-emotional conflict modulation by global control context.

Journal Article Frontiers in human neuroscience · January 2014 The efficiency with which the brain resolves conflict in information processing is determined by contextual factors that modulate internal control states, such as the recent (local) and longer-term (global) occurrence of conflict. Local "control context" e ... Full text Cite

Resource-sharing between internal maintenance and external selection modulates attentional capture by working memory content.

Journal Article Frontiers in human neuroscience · January 2014 It is unclear why and under what circumstances working memory (WM) and attention interact. Here, we apply the logic of the time-based resource-sharing (TBRS) model of WM (e.g., Barrouillet et al., 2004) to explore the mixed findings of a separate, but rela ... Full text Cite

Creatures of habit (and control): a multi-level learning perspective on the modulation of congruency effects.

Journal Article Frontiers in psychology · January 2014 The congruency sequence effect (CSE) describes the finding that congruency effects in classic probes of selective attention (like the Stroop, Simon, and flanker tasks) are smaller following an incongruent than following a congruent trial. The past two deca ... Full text Cite

Attention sharpens the distinction between expected and unexpected percepts in the visual brain.

Journal Article The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · November 2013 Attention, the prioritization of goal-relevant stimuli, and expectation, the modulation of stimulus processing by probabilistic context, represent the two main endogenous determinants of visual cognition. Neural selectivity in visual cortex is enhanced for ... Full text Cite

Affective modulation of cognitive control is determined by performance-contingency and mediated by ventromedial prefrontal and cingulate cortex.

Journal Article The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · October 2013 Cognitive control requires a fine balance between stability, the protection of an on-going task-set, and flexibility, the ability to update a task-set in line with changing contingencies. It is thought that emotional processing modulates this balance, but ... Full text Cite

Grounding predictive coding models in empirical neuroscience research.

Journal Article The Behavioral and brain sciences · June 2013 Clark makes a convincing case for the merits of conceptualizing brains as hierarchical prediction machines. This perspective has the potential to provide an elegant and powerful general theory of brain function, but it will ultimately stand or fall with ev ... Full text Cite

Working memory as internal attention: toward an integrative account of internal and external selection processes.

Journal Article Psychonomic bulletin & review · April 2013 Working memory (WM) and attention have been studied as separate cognitive constructs, although it has long been acknowledged that attention plays an important role in controlling the activation, maintenance, and manipulation of representations in WM. WM ha ... Full text Cite

AFFECTIVE MODULATION OF COGNITIVE CONTROL VARIES WITH PERFORMANCE-CONTINGENCY

Conference JOURNAL OF COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE · January 1, 2013 Link to item Cite

A parieto-medial temporal pathway for the strategic control over working memory biases in human visual attention.

Journal Article The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · December 2012 The contents of working memory (WM) can both aid and disrupt the goal-directed allocation of visual attention. WM benefits attention when its contents overlap with goal-relevant stimulus features, but WM leads attention astray when its contents match featu ... Full text Cite

Cognitive control over working memory biases of selection.

Journal Article Psychonomic bulletin & review · August 2012 Across many studies, researchers have found that representations in working memory (WM) can guide visual attention toward items that match the features of the WM contents. While some researchers have contended that this occurs involuntarily, others have su ... Full text Cite

Explaining neural signals in human visual cortex with an associative learning model.

Journal Article Behavioral neuroscience · August 2012 "Predictive coding" models posit a key role for associative learning in visual cognition, viewing perceptual inference as a process of matching (learned) top-down predictions (or expectations) against bottom-up sensory evidence. At the neural level, these ... Full text Cite

Priming of control: implicit contextual cuing of top-down attentional set.

Journal Article The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · June 2012 Cognitive models have long distinguished between "automatic" associative processes that can be triggered in a bottom-up fashion, and "controlled" processes, where internal goals guide information processing in a deliberate, top-down manner. However, recent ... Full text Cite

Neural mechanisms mediating contingent capture of attention by affective stimuli.

Journal Article Journal of cognitive neuroscience · May 2012 Attention is attracted exogenously by physically salient stimuli, but this effect can be dampened by endogenous attention settings, a phenomenon called "contingent capture." Emotionally salient stimuli are also thought to exert a strong exogenous influence ... Full text Cite

Negative emotion does not modulate rapid feature integration effects.

Journal Article Frontiers in psychology · January 2012 Emotional arousal at encoding is known to facilitate later memory recall. In the present study, we asked whether this emotion-modulation of episodic memory is also evident at very short time scales, as measured by "feature integration effects," the moment- ... Full text Cite

Model-based analysis of context-specific cognitive control.

Journal Article Frontiers in psychology · January 2012 Interference resolution is improved for stimuli presented in contexts (e.g., locations) associated with frequent conflict. This phenomenon, the context-specific proportion congruent (CSPC) effect, has challenged the traditional juxtaposition of "automatic" ... Full text Cite

Right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex mediates individual differences in conflict-driven cognitive control.

Journal Article Journal of cognitive neuroscience · December 2011 Conflict adaptation--a conflict-triggered improvement in the resolution of conflicting stimulus or response representations--has become a widely used probe of cognitive control processes in both healthy and clinical populations. Previous fMRI studies have ... Full text Cite

Surprise! A unifying model of dorsal anterior cingulate function?

Journal Article Nature neuroscience · September 2011 Full text Cite

The neural underpinnings of how reward associations can both guide and misguide attention.

Journal Article J Neurosci · June 29, 2011 It is commonly accepted that reward is an effective motivator of behavior, but little is known about potential costs resulting from reward associations. Here, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate the neural underpinnings of s ... Full text Link to item Cite

Emotional processing in anterior cingulate and medial prefrontal cortex.

Journal Article Trends in cognitive sciences · February 2011 Negative emotional stimuli activate a broad network of brain regions, including the medial prefrontal (mPFC) and anterior cingulate (ACC) cortices. An early influential view dichotomized these regions into dorsal-caudal cognitive and ventral-rostral affect ... Full text Cite

Affective privilege: asymmetric interference by emotional distracters

Journal Article Frontiers in Psychology · 2011 Cite

Expectation and surprise determine neural population responses in the ventral visual stream.

Journal Article The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · December 2010 Visual cortex is traditionally viewed as a hierarchy of neural feature detectors, with neural population responses being driven by bottom-up stimulus features. Conversely, "predictive coding" models propose that each stage of the visual hierarchy harbors t ... Full text Cite

Motor control: exploring the neurochemistry of subliminal inhibition.

Journal Article Current biology : CB · October 2010 A new study links individual differences in unconsciously triggered motor control to variability in GABA neurotransmitter concentration in the supplementary motor area of the human brain. ... Full text Cite

Differential age-related decline in conflict-driven task-set shielding from emotional versus non-emotional distracters.

Journal Article Neuropsychologia · May 2010 While normal aging is associated with a marked decline in cognitive abilities, such as memory and executive functions, recent evidence suggests that control processes involved in regulating responses to emotional stimuli may remain well-preserved in the el ... Full text Cite

Going, going, gone: characterizing the time-course of congruency sequence effects.

Journal Article Frontiers in psychology · January 2010 Performance on traditional selective attention tasks, like the Stroop and flanker protocols, is subject to modulation by trial history, whereby the magnitude of congruency (or conflict) effects is often found to decrease following an incongruent trial comp ... Full text Cite

Expectation (and attention) in visual cognition.

Journal Article Trends in cognitive sciences · September 2009 Visual cognition is limited by computational capacity, because the brain can process only a fraction of the visual sensorium in detail, and by the inherent ambiguity of the information entering the visual system. Two mechanisms mitigate these burdens: atte ... Full text Cite

Search for a threatening target triggers limbic guidance of spatial attention.

Journal Article The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · August 2009 The ability to actively locate potential threats in our environment is highly adaptive. To investigate mediating neural mechanisms, we designed a visual search task in which central cues signaled future location and emotional expression (angry or neutral) ... Full text Cite

Conflict-driven cognitive control mechanisms in the human brain

Conference Neuroscience Research · January 2009 Full text Cite

Multiple conflict-driven control mechanisms in the human brain.

Journal Article Trends in cognitive sciences · October 2008 Conflict between competing neural representations is thought to serve as an internal signal for the recruitment of 'cognitive control', which resolves conflict by biasing information processing in line with current task demands. Because conflict can occur ... Full text Cite

Neural repetition suppression reflects fulfilled perceptual expectations.

Journal Article Nature neuroscience · September 2008 Stimulus-evoked neural activity is attenuated on stimulus repetition (repetition suppression), a phenomenon that is attributed to largely automatic processes in sensory neurons. By manipulating the likelihood of stimulus repetition, we found that repetitio ... Full text Cite

Neural integration of top-down spatial and feature-based information in visual search.

Journal Article The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · June 2008 Visual search is aided by previous knowledge regarding distinguishing features and probable locations of a sought-after target. However, how the human brain represents and integrates concurrent feature-based and spatial expectancies to guide visual search ... Full text Cite

Dissociable neural systems resolve conflict from emotional versus nonemotional distracters.

Journal Article Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · June 2008 The human brain protects the processing of task-relevant stimuli from interference ("conflict") by task-irrelevant stimuli via attentional biasing mechanisms. The lateral prefrontal cortex has been implicated in resolving conflict between competing stimuli ... Full text Cite

Congruency sequence effects and cognitive control.

Journal Article Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · December 2007 Congruency effects in selective attention tasks are subject to sequential modulation: They are smaller following an incongruent stimulus than following a congruent one. This congruency sequence effect has been interpreted as reflecting conflict-driven adju ... Full text Cite

Preparatory neural activity predicts performance on a conflict task.

Journal Article Brain research · October 2007 Advance preparation has been shown to improve the efficiency of conflict resolution. Yet, with little empirical work directly linking preparatory neural activity to the performance benefits of advance cueing, it is not clear whether this relationship resul ... Full text Cite

Neural dynamics of rejection sensitivity.

Journal Article Journal of cognitive neuroscience · June 2007 Rejection sensitivity (RS) is the tendency to anxiously expect, readily perceive, and intensely react to rejection. This study used functional magnetic resonance imaging to explore whether individual differences in RS are mediated by differential recruitme ... Full text Cite

Separate conflict-specific cognitive control mechanisms in the human brain.

Journal Article NeuroImage · April 2007 To ensure optimal task performance, the human brain detects and resolves conflict in information processing via a cognitive control system. However, it is not known whether conflict resolution relies on a single central resource of cognitive control, or on ... Full text Cite

Predictive codes for forthcoming perception in the frontal cortex.

Journal Article Science (New York, N.Y.) · November 2006 Incoming sensory information is often ambiguous, and the brain has to make decisions during perception. "Predictive coding" proposes that the brain resolves perceptual ambiguity by anticipating the forthcoming sensory environment, generating a template aga ... Full text Cite

Resolving emotional conflict: a role for the rostral anterior cingulate cortex in modulating activity in the amygdala.

Journal Article Neuron · September 2006 Effective mental functioning requires that cognition be protected from emotional conflict due to interference by task-irrelevant emotionally salient stimuli. The neural mechanisms by which the brain detects and resolves emotional conflict are still largely ... Full text Cite

Mistaking a house for a face: neural correlates of misperception in healthy humans.

Journal Article Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · April 2006 Individuals with normal vision can sometimes momentarily mistake one object for another. In this functional magnetic resonance imaging study, we investigated how extrastriate visual regions respond during these erroneous perceptual judgements. Subjects wer ... Full text Cite

Foundation and practice of neurofeedback for the treatment of epilepsy.

Journal Article Applied psychophysiology and biofeedback · March 2006 This review provides an updated overview of the neurophysiological rationale, basic and clinical research literature, and current methods of practice pertaining to clinical neurofeedback. It is based on documented findings, rational theory, and the researc ... Full text Cite

Neurofeedback treatment of epilepsy: from basic rationale to practical application.

Journal Article Expert review of neurotherapeutics · February 2006 The treatment of epilepsy through operant conditioning of the sensorimotor rhythm electroencephalogram has a 35-year history. Neurophysiological studies have shown that this phasic oscillation reflects an inhibitory state of the sensorimotor system. Operan ... Full text Cite

Validating the efficacy of neurofeedback for optimizing performance

Journal Article Progress in Brain Research · 2006 Cite

Neocortical connectivity during episodic memory formation

Journal Article PLoS Biology · 2006 During the formation of new episodic memories, a rich array of perceptual information is bound together for long-term storage. However, the brain mechanisms by which sensory representations (such as colors, objects, or individuals) are selected for episodi ... Full text Cite

Validating the efficacy of neurofeedback for optimising performance.

Journal Article Progress in brain research · January 2006 The field of neurofeedback training has largely proceeded without validation. Here we review our studies directed at validating SMR, beta and alpha-theta protocols for improving attention, memory, mood and music and dance performance in healthy participant ... Full text Cite

Cognitive control mechanisms resolve conflict through cortical amplification of task-relevant information.

Journal Article Nature neuroscience · December 2005 A prominent model of how the brain regulates attention proposes that the anterior cingulate cortex monitors the occurrence of conflict between incompatible response tendencies and signals this information to a cognitive control system in dorsolateral prefr ... Full text Cite

Where memory meets attention: neural substrates of negative priming.

Journal Article Journal of cognitive neuroscience · November 2005 The negative priming (NP) effect refers to the observed increase in identification time for a current target stimulus or stimulus feature (the "probe") that has been employed as a distractor stimulus or stimulus feature on the previous trial (the "prime"), ... Full text Cite

Critical validation studies of neurofeedback.

Journal Article Child and adolescent psychiatric clinics of North America · January 2005 The field of neurofeedback training has proceeded largely without validation. In this article the authors review studies directed at validating sensory motor rhythm, beta and alpha-theta protocols for improving attention, memory, and music performance in h ... Full text Cite

The neural correlates and functional integration of cognitive control in a Stroop task.

Journal Article NeuroImage · January 2005 It is well known that performance on a given trial of a cognitive task is affected by the nature of previous trials. For example, conflict effects on interference tasks, such as the Stroop task, are reduced subsequent to high-conflict trials relative to lo ... Full text Cite

Memory structures for encoding and retrieving a piece of music: an ERP investigation.

Journal Article Brain research. Cognitive brain research · December 2004 This study examined behavioral and neural correlates of expert musical memory, specifically the hypothesis that particular bars within a complex piece of music would serve as structural markers for encoding to and retrieval from memory. Six pianists were a ... Full text Cite

The effects of neurofeedback training on the spectral topography of the electroencephalogram.

Journal Article Clinical neurophysiology : official journal of the International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology · November 2004 ObjectiveTo investigate the impact of EEG frequency band biofeedback (neurofeedback) training on spectral EEG topography, which is presumed to mediate cognitive-behavioural training effects. In order to assess the effect of commonly applied neurof ... Full text Cite

The temporal dynamics of electroencephalographic responses to alpha/theta neurofeedback training in healthy subjects

Journal Article Journal of Neurotherapy · June 22, 2004 Background. It has been shown recently that accurate feedback of alpha and theta electroencephalographic (EEG) activity, as employed in the commonly used "alpha/theta protocol," induced linear increments in within-session theta-over-alpha ratios in compari ... Full text Cite

EEG biofeedback of low beta band components: frequency-specific effects on variables of attention and event-related brain potentials.

Journal Article Clinical neurophysiology : official journal of the International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology · January 2004 ObjectiveTo test a common assumption underlying the clinical use of electroencephalographic (EEG) biofeedback training (neurofeedback), that the modulation of discreet frequency bands is associated with frequency-specific effects. Specifically, th ... Full text Cite

Ecological validity of neurofeedback: modulation of slow wave EEG enhances musical performance.

Journal Article Neuroreport · July 2003 Biofeedback-assisted modulation of electrocortical activity has been established to have intrinsic clinical benefits and has been shown to improve cognitive performance in healthy humans. In order to further investigate the pedagogic relevance of electroen ... Full text Cite

The effect of training distinct neurofeedback protocols on aspects of cognitive performance.

Journal Article International journal of psychophysiology : official journal of the International Organization of Psychophysiology · January 2003 The use of neurofeedback as an operant conditioning paradigm has disclosed that participants are able to gain some control over particular aspects of their electroencephalogram (EEG). Based on the association between theta activity (4-7 Hz) and working mem ... Full text Cite

EEG signature and phenomenology of alpha/theta neurofeedback training versus mock feedback.

Journal Article Applied psychophysiology and biofeedback · December 2002 Alpha/theta (a/t) neurofeedback training has in the past successfully been used as a complementary therapeutic relaxation technique in the treatment of alcoholism. In spite of positive clinical outcomes, doubts have been cast on the protocol's specificity ... Full text Cite

Learned self-regulation of EEG frequency components affects attention and event-related brain potentials in humans.

Journal Article Neuroreport · December 2001 Learned enhancement of EEG frequency components in the lower beta range by means of biofeedback has been reported to alleviate attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms. In order to elucidate frequency-specific behavioural effects and neurop ... Full text Cite