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Pro- and Re-active cognitive control (PRORECONT)
Start date: Jan 1, 2010, End date: Dec 31, 2015 PROJECT  FINISHED 

Keeping our behavior adapted to an ever changing environment requires that we constantly adjust information processing. Such adaptation is often considered to require control processes. Adaptive mechanisms can react to an encountered challenge in the environment (reactive control), or can anticipate such potential problems in order to avoid them (proactive control ). The goals of the present project are to better 1) characterize the interplay between pro and reactive control, 2) understand how such control mechanisms are recruited and 3) describe how they alter information processing to optimize behavior. Experimental psychology experiments inducing cognitive conflict (for example the Stroop task), will be used, augmented with several psychophysiological measures, such as High Resolution EEG and Magnetoencephalography (MEG), Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) and fMRI. One current critical question is to sort out behavioral adaptation effect due to control, from the ones independent of control. One original aspect of this project will be to compare spontaneous behavioral adaptation to situations in which control is explicitly recruited. Second, subliminal incorrect response activation will be tracked thanks to electromyographic recording. EEG/MEG recordings, coupled with appropriate topographic and source localization techniques, will reveal the precise spatio-temporal flow of cognitive control. With TMS, thanks to a NeuroNavigation device, it will be possible to test this spatio-temporal flow, by transiently interrupting the normal information processing of delimited brain areas. One technical challenge of this project will be to record and detect subliminal incorrect muscular activations during fMRI acquisition. The possibility to detect such incorrect activations in fMRI will allow to remove several confounding factors in fMRI experiments, and to better understand how such incorrect activations are detected, stopped and corrected in a split second.
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