Zhu Junda, Zhou Xin Maizie, Constantinidis Christos, Salinas Emilio, Stanford Terrence R
Program in Neuroscience, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235, USA.
Department of Biomedical Engineering, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235, USA.
iScience. 2024 Jul 11;27(8):110488. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2024.110488. eCollection 2024 Aug 16.
The ability to suppress inappropriate actions and respond rapidly to appropriate ones matures late in life, after puberty. We investigated the development of this capability in monkeys trained to look away from a lone, bright stimulus (antisaccade task). We evaluated behavioral performance and recorded neural activity in the prefrontal cortex both before and after the transition from puberty to adulthood. Compared to when young, adult monkeys processed the stimulus more rapidly, resisted more effectively the involuntary urge to look at it, and adhered to the task rule more consistently. The spatially selective visuomotor neurons in the prefrontal cortex provided neural correlates of these behavioral changes indicative of a faster transition from stimulus-driven (exogenous) to goal-driven (endogenous) control within the time course of each trial. The results reveal parallel signatures of cognitive maturation in behavior and prefrontal activity that are consistent with improvements in attentional allocation after adolescence.
抑制不适当行为并对适当行为迅速做出反应的能力在青春期后的成年期才成熟。我们在经过训练会避开单独明亮刺激物的猴子（反眼跳任务）身上研究了这种能力的发展。我们评估了行为表现，并记录了从青春期到成年期转变前后前额叶皮层的神经活动。与幼年时相比，成年猴子处理刺激物的速度更快，更有效地抵制了看向它的非自愿冲动，并且更一致地遵守任务规则。前额叶皮层中具有空间选择性的视觉运动神经元为这些行为变化提供了神经关联，表明在每次试验的时间进程内从刺激驱动（外源性）到目标驱动（内源性）控制的更快转变。结果揭示了行为和前额叶活动中认知成熟的平行特征，这与青春期后注意力分配的改善相一致。
