Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 98, Issue 2, Pages 683-687Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.98.2.683
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Funding
- NIDA NIH HHS [T32 DA007261, DA07261] Funding Source: Medline
- NINDS NIH HHS [NS10196, F31 NS010196, NS06833, P50 NS006833] Funding Source: Medline
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Regional cerebral blood flow (BF) was examined in regions of the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) with positron-emission tomography while subjects performed two cognitive tasks, reading nouns aloud and generating appropriate Verbs for the same nouns. The control task was passive viewing of the same words. BF was reduced in regions of the MPFC during word reading and naive verb generation, relative to a control state in which the subjects passively viewed nouns. Practicing verb generation produced improved performance, as measured by response time, which was strongly correlated with further reductions in MPFC and hypothalamic BF, After practice, when verb generation was performed on a novel list of words, reaction times slowed and the pattern of MPFC BF reverted to that seen in the word reading and naive conditions. A separate behavioral study of the verb-generation task indicated that anxiety, high during naive use-generation as measured by heart rate and self-report, decreased with practice on the task but returned with the introduction of a novel list of words. Taken together, these results suggest that the MPFC is part of a network, including the hypothalamus and brainstem, whose activity reflects a dynamic interplay between cognitive task performance and emotion.
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