Understanding the human conflict processing network: A review of the literature on direct neural recordings during performance of a modified stroop task

Ryan S Chung; Jonathon Cavaleri; Shivani Sundaram; Zachary D Gilbert; Roberto Martin Del Campo-Vera; Andrea Leonor; Austin M Tang; Kuang-Hsuan Chen; Rinu Sebastian; Arthur Shao; Alexandra Kammen; Emiliano Tabarsi; Angad S Gogia; Xenos Mason; Christi Heck; Charles Y Liu; Spencer S Kellis; Brian Lee

doi:10.1016/j.neures.2024.03.006

Understanding the human conflict processing network: A review of the literature on direct neural recordings during performance of a modified stroop task

Neurosci Res. 2024 Apr 4:S0168-0102(24)00051-8. doi: 10.1016/j.neures.2024.03.006. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Ryan S Chung¹, Jonathon Cavaleri², Shivani Sundaram², Zachary D Gilbert², Roberto Martin Del Campo-Vera², Andrea Leonor², Austin M Tang², Kuang-Hsuan Chen², Rinu Sebastian², Arthur Shao², Alexandra Kammen², Emiliano Tabarsi², Angad S Gogia², Xenos Mason³, Christi Heck⁴, Charles Y Liu⁵, Spencer S Kellis³, Brian Lee³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Neurological Surgery, Keck School of Medicine of USC, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, United States. Electronic address: rschung@usc.edu.
² Department of Neurological Surgery, Keck School of Medicine of USC, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, United States.
³ Department of Neurological Surgery, Keck School of Medicine of USC, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, United States; USC Neurorestoration Center, Keck School of Medicine of USC, Los Angeles, CA, United States.
⁴ Department of Neurology, Keck School of Medicine of USC, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, United States; USC Neurorestoration Center, Keck School of Medicine of USC, Los Angeles, CA, United States.
⁵ Department of Neurological Surgery, Keck School of Medicine of USC, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, United States; Department of Neurology, Keck School of Medicine of USC, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, United States; USC Neurorestoration Center, Keck School of Medicine of USC, Los Angeles, CA, United States.

PMID: 38582242
DOI: 10.1016/j.neures.2024.03.006

Abstract

The Stroop Task is a well-known neuropsychological task developed to investigate conflict processing in the human brain. Our group has utilized direct intracranial neural recordings in various brain regions during performance of a modified color-word Stroop Task to gain a mechanistic understanding of non-emotional human conflict processing. The purpose of this review article is to: 1) synthesize our own studies into a model of human conflict processing, 2) review the current literature on the Stroop Task and other conflict tasks to put our research in context, and 3) describe how these studies define a network in conflict processing. The figures presented are reprinted from our prior publications and key publications referenced in the manuscript. We summarize all studies to date that employ invasive intracranial recordings in humans during performance of conflict-inducing tasks. For our own studies, we analyzed local field potentials (LFPs) from patients with implanted stereotactic electroencephalography (SEEG) electrodes, and we observed intracortical oscillation patterns as well as intercortical temporal relationships in the hippocampus, amygdala, and orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) during the cue-processing phase of a modified Stroop Task. Our findings suggest that non-emotional human conflict processing involves modulation across multiple frequency bands within and between brain structures.

Keywords: Beta; Conflict processing; Epilepsy; Gamma; Phase amplitude coupling; SEEG; Stroop task; Theta.

Publication types

Review

Grants and funding

R25 NS099008/NS/NINDS NIH HHS/United States