PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Eliana Vassena
AU  - Robin Gerrits
AU  - Jelle Demanet
AU  - Tom Verguts
AU  - Roma Siugzdaite
TI  - Preparation for mental effort recruits Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex: an fNIRS investigation
AID  - 10.1101/216036
DP  - 2017 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 216036
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/11/08/216036.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/11/08/216036.full
AB  - Preparing for a mentally demanding task calls upon cognitive and motivational resources. The underlying neural implementation of these mechanisms is receiving growing attention, given the implications for professional, social, and medical contexts. While several fMRI studies converge in assigning a crucial role to a cortico-subcortical network including Anterior Cigulate Cortex (ACC) and striatum, the involvement of Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex (DLPFC) during mental effort anticipation has yet to be replicated. This study was designed to target DLPFC contribution using functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS), as a more cost-effective tool measuring cortical hemodynamics. We adapted a validated mental effort task, where participants performed easy and difficult mental calculation, while measuring DLPFC activity during the anticipation phase. As hypothesized, DLPFC activity increased during preparation for a hard task as compared to an easy task. Besides replicating a previous fMRI study, these results establish fNIRS as an effective tool to investigate cortical contributions to preparation for effortful behavior. This is especially useful if one requires testing large samples (e.g., to target individual differences), populations with contraindication for functional MRI (e.g., infants or patients with metal implants), or subjects in more naturalistic environments (e.g., work or sport).