He who is well prepared has half won the battle: an FMRI study of task preparation.

ABSTRACT: The neural mechanism underlying preparation for tasks that vary in difficulty has not been explored. This functional magnetic resonance imaging study manipulated task difficulty by varying the working memory (WM) load of the n-back task. Each n-back task block was preceded by a preparation period involving a screen that indicated the level of difficulty of the upcoming task. Consistent with previous work, activation in some brain regions depended on WM load in the task. These regions were used as regions of interest for the univariate and multivariate (classification) analyses of preparation periods. The findings were that the patterns of brain activation during task preparation contain information about the upcoming task difficulty. (1) A support vector machine classifier was able to deco

SUBMITTER: Manelis A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4318533 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature