Oscillatory activity in bilateral prefrontal cortices is altered by distractor strength during working memory processing

•How distractors affect the oscillations serving working memory remains unclear.•We used MEG to examine neural responses during distractor inhibition in 46 adults.•Participants performed a working memory task with high/low distractor conditions.•Stronger prefrontal alpha/beta oscillations were obser...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:NeuroImage (Orlando, Fla.) Fla.), 2024-11, Vol.301, p.120878, Article 120878
Main Authors: Hall, Megan C., Rempe, Maggie P., Glesinger, Ryan J., Horne, Lucy K., Okelberry, Hannah J., John, Jason A., Embury, Christine M., Heinrichs-Graham, Elizabeth, Wilson, Tony W.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Brain research
Cognitive ability
Cognitive control
Cortex (frontal)
Frontal gyrus
Functional inhibition
Information processing
Inhibitory control
Magnetoencephalography
Magnetoencephalography (MEG)
Memory
Prefrontal cortex
Theta rhythms
Ventral attention network (VAN)
Citations: Items that this one cites
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:•How distractors affect the oscillations serving working memory remains unclear.•We used MEG to examine neural responses during distractor inhibition in 46 adults.•Participants performed a working memory task with high/low distractor conditions.•Stronger prefrontal alpha/beta oscillations were observed during high distractors.•Alpha/beta oscillations in bilateral prefrontal cortices aid distractor inhibition. Working memory (WM) enables the temporary storage of limited information and is a central component of higher order cognitive function. Irrelevant and/or distracting information can have a negative impact on WM processing and suppressing such incoming stimuli is critical to maintaining adequate performance. However, the neural mechanisms and dynamics underlying such distractor inhibition remain poorly understood. In the current study, we enrolled 46 healthy adults (Mage: 27.92, Nfemale: 28) who completed a Sternberg type WM task with high- and low-distractor conditions during magnetoencephalography (MEG). MEG data were transformed into the time-frequency domain and significant task-related oscillatory responses were imaged to identify the underlying anatomical areas. Whole-brain paired t-tests, with cluster-based permutation testing for multiple comparisons correction, were performed to assess differences between the low- and high-distractor conditions for each oscillatory response. Across conditions, we found strong alpha and beta oscillations (i.e., decreases relative to baseline) and increases in theta power throughout the encoding and maintenance periods. Whole-brain contrasts revealed significantly stronger alpha and beta oscillations in bilateral prefrontal regions during maintenance in high- compared to low-distractor trials, with the stronger beta oscillations being centered on the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and right inferior frontal gyrus, while those for alpha being within the right anterior prefrontal cortices and the right middle frontal gyrus. These findings suggest that alpha and beta oscillations in the bilateral prefrontal cortices play a major role in the inhibition of distracting information during WM maintenance. Our results also contribute to prior research on cognitive control and functional inhibition, in which prefrontal regions have been widely implicated.
ISSN:1053-8119
1095-9572
1095-9572
DOI:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2024.120878