Seminar Information

Speaker:

Dr. Glenn Wylie
Assistant Professor
UMDNJ

Title:

Control processes and the brain: what are frontal and parietal areas doing?

Abstract:

My research has focused on control of action:  those processes that convert intentions into actions.  Such control is required when one switches from one action (task) to another, and this observation has engendered the development of the so-called task-switching paradigm.  In this paradigm, subjects are given at least two tasks.  On some trials, they switch from one task to the other while on other trials, they repeatedly perform each task.  Research has shown that subjects respond with longer latencies on switch trials than on repeated-task trials – a performance decrement called the 'switch cost'.  Moreover, it has also been shown that a specific network of areas including dorso-lateral prefrontal cortex and superior parietal cortex, is more active when subjects are required to switch than when they repeat the same task.  Both the switch cost and the increase in brain activity might indeed be due to control processes, but there are alternative interpretations.  In three experiments, I will explore one alternative – that both switch costs and increased activity in this fronto-parietal network is more closely related to interference than to switching task per se.