Department of Work and Social Psychology, Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Maastricht University, Maastricht, the Netherlands.
Department of Cognitive Neuroscience, Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Maastricht University, Maastricht, the Netherlands.
PLoS One. 2018 Jun 18;13(6):e0198204. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0198204. eCollection 2018.
Investing mental effort is costly, and the investment has to be matched by a reward to make a person engage in task performance. However, the neural structures underlying the continued management of mental effort are not known. Previous work has identified left-lateralized structures, most prominently the left anterior Insular Cortex (aIC) as regions implied in post-hoc evaluation and also anticipation of mental effort investment. We present a study aimed at identifying neural structures that are sensitive to changes in both task load and fatigue-induced state load. Sixteen healthy participants performed an n-back task before and after a fatigue-inducing day in a helicopter simulator or a free day. Subjective mental effort ratings showed an interaction of the effects of both task and state load changes, with a reduced effect of task load during the fatigued state. Testing for the same interaction effect in a whole-brain functional MRI data, we found a left-lateralized group of clusters in aIC, the anterior cingulate cortex, the dorsal striatum and frontal eye field and M1. We discuss the possible role of these areas and also the relevance of our findings in the light of the proposed opportunity cost model of mental effort.
投入心理努力是有代价的，并且只有当回报与投入相匹配时，人们才会投入到任务表现中。然而，持续管理心理努力的神经结构尚不清楚。先前的工作已经确定了左侧结构，最突出的是左侧前岛叶皮层（aIC），作为事后评估和心理努力投资预期所涉及的区域。我们提出了一项旨在确定对任务负荷和疲劳引起的状态负荷变化都敏感的神经结构的研究。16 名健康参与者在直升机模拟器或空闲日之前和之后进行了 n 回任务。主观心理努力评分显示出任务和状态负荷变化的相互作用，在疲劳状态下，任务负荷的影响降低。在全脑功能磁共振成像数据中测试相同的相互作用效应，我们在 aIC、前扣带皮层、背侧纹状体和额眼区以及 M1 中发现了一组左侧集群。我们讨论了这些区域的可能作用，以及我们的发现与心理努力的机会成本模型的相关性。
