Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging (WIN), Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, 08540, USA.
Nat Commun. 2024 Jun 5;15(1):4802. doi: 10.1038/s41467-024-49128-w.
Staying engaged is necessary to maintain goal-directed behaviors. Despite this, engagement exhibits continuous, intrinsic fluctuations. Even in experimental settings, animals, unlike most humans, repeatedly and spontaneously move between periods of complete task engagement and disengagement. We, therefore, looked at behavior in male macaques (macaca mulatta) in four tasks while recording fMRI signals. We identified consistent autocorrelation in task disengagement. This made it possible to build models capturing task-independent engagement. We identified task general patterns of neural activity linked to impending sudden task disengagement in mid-cingulate gyrus. By contrast, activity centered in perigenual anterior cingulate cortex (pgACC) was associated with maintenance of performance across tasks. Importantly, we carefully controlled for task-specific factors such as the reward history and other motivational effects, such as response vigor, in our analyses. Moreover, we showed pgACC activity had a causal link to task engagement: transcranial ultrasound stimulation of pgACC changed task engagement patterns.
保持参与度对于维持目标导向行为是必要的。尽管如此，参与度表现出持续的、内在的波动。即使在实验环境中，动物也不像大多数人类那样，在完全投入任务和脱离任务的状态之间反复且自发地转换。因此，我们在四项任务中观察了雄性猕猴（Macaca mulatta）的行为，同时记录 fMRI 信号。我们发现任务脱离过程中有一致的自相关性。这使得构建捕捉与任务无关的参与度的模型成为可能。我们发现了与中扣带回皮层（mid-cingulate gyrus）即将突然脱离任务相关的神经活动的任务一般模式。相比之下，活动集中在前扣带皮层腹侧（perigenual anterior cingulate cortex，pgACC）与跨任务的表现维持有关。重要的是，我们在分析中仔细控制了任务特定的因素，如奖励历史和其他动机效应，如反应活力。此外，我们还表明 pgACC 活动与任务参与度之间存在因果关系：pgACC 的经颅超声刺激改变了任务参与度模式。
