Cognition And Connectivity

We recently published in Frontiers in Psychology a collaboration with the Besner and Danckert laboratories on changing functional connectivity with task demands.

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The work grew from behavioral data that Shannon O'Malley and Derek Besner collected to test some implications of the Dual Route Model for reading. They suggested that there needed to be connections between module components that were not part of the original model in order to account for the pattern of RT effects seen when participants read words, named numerals or reported the parity of each stimulus type. It seemed that that if functional connectivity is changing behavioral response times there should be some correlates detectable with brain activity, and relying on the expertise of the Danckert lab we all undertook to repeat the basic behavioral task while collecting fMRI data which we used to compute Granger Causality maps as a function of condition. We found significant Granger Causality only for the pairings of stimuli and task that resulted in the need to override a default mode of response. A region in the frontal pole showed up as the area with the important modulation in functional connectivity. Comments are welcomed.