Space - Under The Combined Effects Of The Digital Response Code Conflict Adaptation Process Erp Study

The human anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), which is active during many conflict-monitoring tasks, is thought to participate with prefrontal cortex in a distributed network for conscious self-regulation. Indeed, given that voluntary executive attention is normally associated with a subjective feeling of mental effort proportional to the intensity of the attentional engagement, one may tentatively consider that the role of mental effort is to signal when executive control needs to be deployed because our cognitive resources are close to being depleted. The relationship between ACC activation and task difficulty or effort had been emphasized. This hypothesis predicts that conflict-related ACC activation should occur only when the conflicting stimuli are consciously perceived. Dehaene found that subliminal conflicts are resolved without ACC contribution under the subliminal conflict paradigm. The reason that the subliminal conflict doesn't recruit the ACC is because the subject can't aware the conflict involved in the subliminal task. Other studies also found that the activation of ACC is related with the consciousness states and the awareness of task conflict. To clarify the relation between ACC and consciousness, we investigate conflict in the absence of consciousness by relying on the SNARC effect.We define the SNARC compatible trial is congruent trial and SNARC incompatible trial is incongruent trial. For purposes of analysis, we divide these trials into two categories: those that follow compatible trials (here labeled cI), and those that follow incompatible ones (iI).Results indicate an interaction between magnitude and side of response reached significant, there is a clear SNARC effect on RTs. The cI trials were significantly slower than iI trials, indicating a clear conflict adaptation effect. For stimulus-locked waveforms, the N2 showed peak differences to be maximal at Fcz in the 260-300 ms interval after target between the cI condition and iI condition. No significant difference emerged between congruent trials and incongruent trials. A voltage map of the difference wave showed strong activity at the frontocentral region. The Dipole analysis (BESA software) localized the generator of the N2 (cI minus iI) in near the dorsal ACC.Present study finds the conflict adaptation effect in the SNARC, which is depart from the classic conscious monitoring view. Since there maybe some debate on defining the parity judgment task as a conflict task, we are aware that caution needs to be exerted in drawing firm conclusions from our study which adds to the ongoing debate of the role of the ACC in cognition.