@misc{10481/45448,
year = {2017},
url = {http://hdl.handle.net/10481/45448},
abstract = {To adjust our behavior based in goals is a core human ability that allows us to
rapidly adapt to new demands or new environments. Cognitive control, that is, the
mechanism that regulates our thought and actions upon internal representations of our
goals (Norman & Shallice, 1980), is thought to underlie this ability. Due to its central role
in our cognitive activity, control is involved in a plethora of phenomena, and therefore it
can be analyzed from different perspectives. Specifically, this thesis takes advantage of
a temporal classification: reactive versus prospective control. While reactive control
refers to the immediate deployment of control upon conflict detection, prospective
processes allow the anticipation and corresponding adjustment to forthcoming demands
(Braver, 2012). The main aim of this thesis is to advance our knowledge about proactive
control.
All of our experiments highlight the predominance of top-down influences in
preparatory mechanisms. However, bottom-up elements also play a role in controldemanding
context. The biggest piece of evidence in this line comes from Experimental
Series 1, which revealed an unconscious bias in task set selection. This result is
coherent with previous studies showing unconscious influences in high-level processes
(van Gaal et al., 2012). It therefore shows that at least some proactive control
mechanisms can be altered by bottom-up information. Subsequently, in conjunction with
previous similar studies (e.g. De Pisapia et al., 2011), they suggest the dissociation
between proactive control and consciousness (Hommel, 2017). Experiments I and II
also show how some stimuli, such as instructions, can elicit control processes
automatically (Liefooghe, Wenke, & De Houwer, 2012). The evolutive relevance of fast
learning (Cole et al., 2013) can underlie this automatic effect of instructions.
Despite the relative automaticity described before, our data show an
overwhelming predominance of top-down effects in proactive control. First, in
Experimental Series I, the unconscious effect is only found when the executive setting is
configured properly according to conscious expectations (Kiefer, 2012). Therefore,
subliminal perception can affect but not initiate control processes (van Gaal et al.,
2012). Moreover, in Experiment I, conscious expectations regarding future demands
were shown to modulate brain activity during preparation. In the proactive control
framework (Braver, 2012), the reported category specific activations can be understood
as the outcome of a top-down influence, originating in control regions, on incoming
information. Last, Experiment II reveals how actively preparing to implement novel task
sets involves a large set of control areas. Moreover, category specific information could
be decoded from selective processing regions seconds before target onset, which
shows again a bias in the processing of incoming information based on internal goals.
Altogether, our results suggest that proactive cognitive control sets up our informationprocessing
system in a top-down manner to allow some extent of automaticity
(Dehaene & Naccache, 2001; Kiefer, 2012; Kiefer & Martens, 2010). This, in turn, would
make our control systems more efficient by reducing costs associated to maintained
monitoring, and therefore, optimizing the consecution of our goals (Kiefer, 2012).
In sum, the present thesis reveals a dynamic relationship between bottom-up and
top-down processes. We interpret this relationship within the predictive coding
framework (Friston, 2005), which suggests that our psychological experience is the
result of an iterative interaction between bottom-up information and top-down
predictions that bias this information to guide perception. Such mechanism would allow
the evolutive development of a proactive control system (Buschman & Miller, 2014).},
organization = {Tesis Univ. Granada. Programa Oficial de Doctorado en: Psicología},
publisher = {Universidad de Granada},
keywords = {Cerebro},
keywords = {Desarrollo cognitivo},
keywords = {Mente},
keywords = {Procesos mentales},
keywords = {Redes neuronales (Neurobiología)},
keywords = {Sistema nervioso},
keywords = {Neuroimagen},
keywords = {Resonancia magnética},
title = {Neural mechanisms of high-level cognitive processes in task preparation and implementation},
author = {González García, Carlos},
}