Biology subjects

Farooqui, A. A.

Publications and source records attributed to Farooqui, A. A..

5 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2026

Overarching Programs that Frame Episodes of Focused Cognition

Our goals are achieved through extended task episodes. While its well recognized that such episodes are controlled and executed as a single unit, how this is achieved remains unclear. Key observations during the execution of extended episodes - increased reaction time at episode beginnings and widespread neural activation at episode completions - have suggested that some additional, episode-related goings-on may occur at the beginning and the end. We found that when participants executed episodes of different durations, but involving trials identical in every aspect, distinct episodes elicited distinct activity patterns across the entire cortex at their beginnings as well as at their completions, showing that information related to the overarching episode floods the cortex at these junctures and evidencing a program related to the entire episode that got instated and dismantled when episodes begin and complete. This episode-related program was distinct from rules, contexts, working memory contents, and representations of identity and position of steps - issues well recognized to have a role in task execution and known to elicit distinct activity patterns in frontoparietal regions that typically activate during task execution. Unlike these issues, this program was discernible not only in frontoparietal regions but across the entire cortex, regardless of the level of univariate activation exhibited by that region, indicating that the dynamics of this program involved a massive resetting of neural activity across the entire cortex.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2024

Meta-Control Demands Deactivate Cognitive-Control Regions

The well-known activation of frontoparietal regions forms the basis of neuroscientific accounts of cognitive control. Control interventions that activate frontoparietal regions also generate a characteristic psychophysiological signature that, amongst others, is accompanied by increased pupil size. Here, we characterize a distinct but key aspect of cognitive control that deactivates these frontoparietal regions and decreases pupil size. Our goals are completed through extended tasks that are hierarchically controlled and executed as a single entity despite consisting of numerous steps (e.g., preparing coffee, writing emails). This is achieved through higher-level programs instantiated at the beginning of their execution that will go on to organize cognition and instantiate various control interventions during the ensuing task execution. Difficult episodes begin with the instantiation of more complex higher-level programs that will go on to organize a more complex set of control interventions. However, the demands related to instantiating these more complex programs are likely to be distinct from those related to control interventions. Control interventions, like selective attention, inhibition, etc., involve making goal-directed changes in sensory and motor regions to select the correct incoming information and action. In contrast, instantiating higher-level programs involves embodying the set of commands that will go on to make the relevant goal-directed neurocognitive changes later in the ensuing extended task by organizing and instantiating the correct set of control interventions. Across four experiments, we show that while executing difficult episodes activates frontoparietal regions and increases pupil size, the beginning of these difficult episodes, i.e., junctures where more complex higher-level programs are instantiated, deactivates these same frontoparietal regions and decreases pupil size. We thus show that cognitive control related to difficult extended tasks involves categorically different demands at the beginning compared to during their subsequent execution.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2018

Hierarchical Cognition causes Task Related Deactivations but not just in Default Mode Regions

AbstractThe well-known deactivation of the Default Mode Network (DMN) during external tasks is usually thought to reflect the suppression of internally directed mental activity during external attention. In 3 experiments with human participants we organized sequences of task events identical in their attentional and control demands into larger task episodes. We found that DMN deactivation across such sequential events was never constant, but was maximum at the beginning of the episode, then decreased gradually across the episode, reaching baseline towards episode completion, with the final event of the episode eliciting an activation. Crucially, this pattern of activity was not limited to a fixed set of DMN regions but, across experiments, was shown by a variable set of regions expected to be uninvolved in processing the ongoing task. This change in deactivation across sequential but identical events showed that the deactivation cannot be related to attentional/control demands which were constant across the episode, instead it has to be related to some episode related load that was maximal at the beginning and then decreased gradually as parts of the episode got executed. We argue that this load resulted from cognitive programs through which the entire episode was hierarchically executed as one unit. At the beginning of task episodes, programs related to their entire duration is assembled, causing maximal deactivation. As execution proceeds, elements within the program related to the completed parts of the episode dismantle, thereby decreasing the program load and causing a decrease in deactivation.\n\nSignificance StatementWe prepare breakfasts and write emails, and not individually execute their many component acts. The current study suggests that cognitive entities that enable such hierarchical execution of goal-directed behavior may cause the ubiquitously seen deactivation during external task execution. Further, while this deactivation has previously been associated with a defined set of the so called default mode regions, current study demonstrates that deactivation is shown by any region not currently involved in task execution, and in certain task episodes can even include attention related fronto-parietal regions as well as primary sensory and motor regions.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2017

Cognitive Entities Underpinning Task Episodes

Cognitive Entities Underpinning Task EpisodesAccounts of hierarchical cognition suggest that extended task episodes as one task entity and not individually execute their component acts. Such hierarchical execution is frequently thought to occur by first instantiating a sequence representation in working memory that then controls the identity and sequence of component steps. In contrast, we evidence hierarchical execution of extended behavior in situations where the identity and sequence of component steps was unknown and not linked to any sequence representation. Participants executed unpredictable trials wherein, depending on the margin color, they could either choose the smaller value or the font of the two numbers. Crucially, they were biased into construing a recurring instance of three or five trials as one task episode. Behavioral signs of hierarchy, identical to those seen previously with memorized sequence execution, were seen - High trial 1 RT, higher trial 1 RT before longer task episodes, and absence of trial level switch cost specifically across episode boundaries. This showed that hierarchical task sequence representations are not a requisite for hierarchical organization of cognition. Merely construing behavior to be executed as a task episode is enough for the accompanying cognition to be hierarchically organized. Task episodes are executed through the intermediation of episode related programs that are assembled at the beginning and control and organize cognition across time.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2016

When Attended and Conscious Perception Deactivates Fronto-Parietal Regions

Conscious and attended perception is commonly thought to elicit fronto-parietal activity. However, supportive evidence comes largely from studies which involve detecting a target and reporting its visibility. This approach confounds conscious perception with goal completion of either the perceptual task of detection or the metacognitive task of introspective reporting. In contrast, in real life such perceptions are a means of achieving goals and rarely a goal in themselves, and almost never involve explicit metacognitive reports. It therefore remains unclear if fronto-parietal activity is indeed a correlate of conscious perception or is the result of confounds related to goal completion. Here we show that conscious and attended perception when delinked from goals does not increase fronto-parietal activity, and when inconsequential for the goal may even deactivate these regions. In experiments 1 and 2 participants attended to a highly visible stream of letters to detect the occasional targets in their midst. The non-target letters, in spite of being visible and attended to, deactivated fronto-parietal regions. In experiment 3 we looked at the activity elicited by a loud auditory cue that had to be kept in memory for up to 9 s and used to select the correct rule for completing the goal. Even such a salient, attended and remembered event did not elicit prefrontal activity. Across these experiments conscious and attended perception only activated the relevant sensory regions while goal completion events activated fronto-parietal regions.\n\nSignificance statementConsciousness and attended perception has been seen to correlate with fronto-parietal activity. This informs key theories of consciousness and attention, e.g. widespread availability of incoming information or its higher level representation causes perceptual awareness, or that top down attention during perception broadcasts incoming sensations into frontal and parietal regions. However such experiments unwittingly conflate attended and conscious perception with some form of goal completion, whereas such perception in our daily life mostly serves as a means of goal completion and not a goal in itself. Here we show that such perception when delinked from goal completion does not activate fronto-parietal regions, and may even deactivate these regions if the percept is inconsequential for goal completion.

neuroscience↗