The Higher, More Complicated: The Neural Mechanism of Hierarchical Task Switching on Prefrontal Cortex

Chengdong Zhu; Jiahui Han

doi:10.3390/brainsci12050645

The Higher, More Complicated: The Neural Mechanism of Hierarchical Task Switching on Prefrontal Cortex

Brain Sci. 2022 May 14;12(5):645. doi: 10.3390/brainsci12050645.

Authors

Chengdong Zhu¹, Jiahui Han^{2

3}

Affiliations

¹ School of Physical Education, Liaoning Normal University, Dalian 116029, China.
² Brain and Cognitive Neuroscience Research Center, Liaoning Normal University, Dalian 116029, China.
³ Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Neuroscience, Liaoning Province, Dalian 116029, China.

Abstract

Cognitive control is essential to daily life. Task switching is a classical paradigm used to study cognitive control. Previous researchers have studied the representation of different abstract hierarchical rules in the prefrontal cortex and explored the process mechanisms of task switching. However, the differences between the different hierarchical levels of task switching, especially the related neural mechanisms in the prefrontal cortex, are still unclear. This review focuses on and summarizes this issue. The present study suggests that the higher the hierarchical rule shifting or task switching, the more anterior the activation is on the prefrontal cortex. In addition, a high hierarchy of rules or tasks is more abstract, which leads to a larger switching cost.

Keywords: cognitive control; hierarchical structure; prefrontal cortex; task switching.

Publication types

Review

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (32100848), the Natural Science Foundation of Liaoning Province (2020-BS-186), the Education Department Project of Liaoning Province (LQ2020029), the Research project on economic and social development of Liaoning Province (2022lslwzzkt-025), and the Ph.D. Start-up Project of Liaoning Normal University (BS2020L006).