John Jonides

YNIMG Journal 2020 Journal Article

Neighborhood poverty predicts altered neural and behavioral response inhibition

• Rachel C. Tomlinson
• S. Alexandra Burt
• Rebecca Waller
• John Jonides
• Alison L. Miller
• Ashley N. Gearhardt
• Scott J. Peltier
• Kelly L. Klump

Socioeconomic disadvantage during childhood is associated with a myriad of negative adult outcomes. One mechanism through which disadvantage undermines positive outcomes may be by disrupting the development of self-control. The goal of the present study was to examine pathways from three key indicators of socioeconomic disadvantage – low family income, low maternal education, and neighborhood poverty – to neural and behavioral measures of response inhibition. We utilized data from a representative cohort of 215 twins (ages 7–18 years, 70% male) oversampled for exposure to disadvantage, who participated in the Michigan Twins Neurogenetics Study (MTwiNS), a study within the Michigan State University Twin Registry (MSUTR). Our child-friendly Go/No-Go task activated the bilateral inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), and activation during this task predicted behavioral inhibition performance, extending prior work on adults to youth. Critically, we also found that neighborhood poverty, assessed via geocoding, but not family income or maternal education, was associated with IFG activation, a finding that we replicated in an independent sample of disadvantaged youth. Further, we found that neighborhood poverty predicted response inhibition performance via its effect on IFG activation. These results provide the first mechanistic evidence that disadvantaged contexts may undermine self-control via their effect on the brain. The broader neighborhood, beyond familial contexts, may be critically important for this association, suggesting that contexts beyond the home have profound effects on the developing brain and behaviors critical for future health, wealth, and wellbeing.

YNIMG Journal 2020 Journal Article

Neural correlates of working memory training: Evidence for plasticity in older adults

• Alexandru D. Iordan
• Katherine A. Cooke
• Kyle D. Moored
• Benjamin Katz
• Martin Buschkuehl
• Susanne M. Jaeggi
• Thad A. Polk
• Scott J. Peltier

Brain activity typically increases with increasing working memory (WM) load, regardless of age, before reaching an apparent ceiling. However, older adults exhibit greater brain activity and reach ceiling at lower loads than younger adults, possibly reflecting compensation at lower loads and dysfunction at higher loads. We hypothesized that WM training would bolster neural efficiency, such that the activation peak would shift towards higher memory loads after training. Pre-training, older adults showed greater recruitment of the WM network than younger adults across all loads, with decline at the highest load. Ten days of adaptive training on a verbal WM task improved performance and led to greater brain responsiveness at higher loads for both groups. For older adults the activation peak shifted rightward towards higher loads. Finally, training increased task-related functional connectivity in older adults, both within the WM network and between this task-positive network and the task-negative/default-mode network. These results provide new evidence for functional plasticity with training in older adults and identify a potential signature of improvement at the neural level.

YNIMG Journal 2014 Journal Article

Does resting-state connectivity reflect depressive rumination? A tale of two analyses

• Marc G. Berman
• Bratislav Misic
• Martin Buschkuehl
• Ethan Kross
• Patricia J. Deldin
• Scott Peltier
• Nathan W. Churchill
• Susanne M. Jaeggi

Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) is characterized by rumination. Prior research suggests that resting-state brain activation reflects rumination when depressed individuals are not task engaged. However, no study has directly tested this. Here we investigated whether resting-state epochs differ from induced ruminative states for healthy and depressed individuals. Most previous research on resting-state networks comes from seed-based analyses with the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC). By contrast, we examined resting state connectivity by using the complete multivariate connectivity profile (i. e. , connections across all brain nodes) and by comparing these results to seeded analyses. We find that unconstrained resting-state intervals differ from active rumination states in strength of connectivity and that overall connectivity was higher for healthy vs. depressed individuals. Relationships between connectivity and subjective mood (i. e. , behavior) were strongly observed during induced rumination epochs. Furthermore, connectivity patterns that related to subjective mood were strikingly different for MDD and healthy control (HC) groups suggesting different mood regulation mechanisms.

YNIMG Journal 2013 Journal Article

Disrupted cortico-cerebellar connectivity in older adults

• Jessica A. Bernard
• Scott J. Peltier
• Jillian Lee Wiggins
• Susanne M. Jaeggi
• Martin Buschkuehl
• Brett W. Fling
• Youngbin Kwak
• John Jonides

Healthy aging is marked by declines in a variety of cognitive and motor abilities. A better understanding of the aging brain may aid in elucidating the neural substrates of these behavioral effects. Investigations of resting state functional brain connectivity have provided insights into pathology, and to some degree, healthy aging. Given the role of the cerebellum in both motor and cognitive behaviors, as well as its known volumetric declines with age, investigating cerebellar networks may shed light on the neural bases of age-related functional declines. We mapped the resting state networks of the lobules of the right hemisphere and the vermis of the cerebellum in a group of healthy older adults and compared them to those of young adults. We report disrupted cortico-cerebellar resting state network connectivity in older adults. These results remain even when controlling for cerebellar volume, signal-to-noise ratio, and signal-to-fluctuation noise ratio. Specifically, there was consistent disruption of cerebellar connectivity with both the striatum and the medial temporal lobe. Associations between connectivity strength and both sensorimotor and cognitive task performances indicate that cerebellar engagement with the default mode network and striatal pathways is associated with better performance for older adults. These results extend our understanding of the resting state networks of the aging brain to include cortico-cerebellar networks, and indicate that age differences in network connectivity strength are important for behavior.

YNIMG Journal 2013 Journal Article

Neural evidence for a 3-state model of visual short-term memory

• Derek Evan Nee
• John Jonides

Recent research has suggested that short-term memory (STM) can be partitioned into three distinct states. By this model, a single item is held in the focus of attention making it available for immediate processing (focus of attention), a capacity-limited set of additional items is actively maintained for future processing (direct access region), and other recently presented information is passively active, but can nevertheless influence ongoing cognition (activated portion of long-term memory). While there is both behavioral and neural support for this 3-state model in verbal STM, it is unclear whether the model generalizes to non-verbal STM. Here, we tested a 3-state model of visual STM using fMRI. We found a triple dissociation of regions involved in the access of each hypothesized state. The inferior parietal cortex mediated access to the focus of attention, the medial temporal lobe (MTL) including the hippocampus mediated access to the direct access region, and the left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) mediated access to the activated portion of long-term memory. Direct comparison with previously collected verbal STM data revealed overlapping neural activations involved in the access of each state across different forms of content suggesting that mechanisms of access are domain general. These data support a 3-state model of STM.

YNIMG Journal 2011 Journal Article

Dissociable contributions of prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus to short-term memory: Evidence for a 3-state model of memory

• Derek Evan Nee
• John Jonides

Behavioral research has yielded conflicting results regarding the architecture of short-term memory (STM). Whereas a consensus has emerged that within STM a single chunk within the focus of attention (FA) has a privileged status, it is unclear whether further distinctions exist. One proposal is that outside of FA, memory is all of one sort with a continuous progression from STM to long-term memory (LTM). On the other hand, sharp performance drop-offs when STM is loaded with more than 4±1 items suggest distinctions between STM and LTM. We use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to adjudicate between these theories. A neural triple dissociation provided evidence for a 3-state model of memory. Critically, prefrontal cortex was selectively enhanced to retrieval from activated portions of LTM whereas the hippocampus was associated with retrieval of items within putative 4±1 capacity limits. We hypothesize that the associative properties of the hippocampus serve to inter-relate information actively maintained in STM which not only promotes strong STM, but also lays the foundations for subsequent LTM. By contrast, information not actively maintained in mind requires top-down retrieval processes mediated by the prefrontal cortex. These data provide key insights into the architecture of STM and its relationship to LTM.

YNIMG Journal 2010 Journal Article

Evaluating functional localizers: The case of the FFA

• Marc G. Berman
• Joonkoo Park
• Richard Gonzalez
• Thad A. Polk
• Amanda Gehrke
• Scott Knaffla
• John Jonides

Functional localizers are routinely used in neuroimaging studies to test hypotheses about the function of specific brain areas. The specific tasks and stimuli used to localize particular regions vary widely from study to study even when the same cortical region is targeted. Thus, it is important to ask whether task and stimulus changes lead to differences in localization or whether localization procedures are largely immune to differences in tasks and contrasting stimuli. We present two experiments and a literature review that explore whether face localizer tasks yield differential localization in the fusiform gyrus as a function of task and contrasting stimuli. We tested standard localization tasks–passive viewing, 1-back, and 2-back memory tests–and did not find differences in localization based on task. We did, however, find differences in the extent, strength and patterns/reliabilities of the activation in the fusiform gyrus based on comparison stimuli (faces vs. houses compared to faces vs. scrambled stimuli).

YNIMG Journal 2009 Journal Article

Common and distinct neural correlates of perceptual and memorial selection

• Derek Evan Nee
• John Jonides

A critical aspect of cognitive control is the ability to select goal-relevant information in the face of competing distraction. A popular account is that common top-down selection processes underlie the ability to select among competing percepts and memories. We test the degree to which selective attention and memorial selection recruit the same neural resources. We demonstrate that both functions elicit largely overlapping networks within the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), frontal eye fields (FEF), premotor cortex, and superior parietal lobule (SPL). Despite the close commonalities of selective attention and memorial selection, our results demonstrate that the SPL and FEF show preferential involvement in selective attention, whereas left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) is uniquely associated with memorial selection. Thus, the two sorts of selection are not identical. We show further that variations in shared selection circuits are associated with differences in behavioral performance, suggesting that economy of control is beneficial to performance.

YNIMG Journal 2007 Journal Article

Neural mechanisms of proactive interference-resolution

• Derek Evan Nee
• John Jonides
• Marc G. Berman

The ability to mitigate interference from information that was previously relevant, but is no longer relevant, is central to successful cognition. Several studies have implicated left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) as a region tied to this ability, but it is unclear whether this result generalizes across different tasks. In addition, it has been suggested that left anterior prefrontal cortex (APFC) also plays a role in proactive interference-resolution although support for this claim has been limited. The present study used event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate the role of these regions in resolving proactive-interference across two different tasks performed on the same subjects. Results indicate that both left VLPFC and left APFC are involved in the resolution of proactive interference across tasks. However, different functional networks related to each region suggest dissociable roles for the two regions. Additionally, regions of the posterior cingulate gyrus demonstrated unique involvement in facilitation when short- and long-term memory converged. This pattern of results serves to further specify models of proactive interference-resolution.

YNIMG Journal 2005 Journal Article

Common and unique components of response inhibition revealed by fMRI

• Tor D. Wager
• Ching-Yune C. Sylvester
• Steven C. Lacey
• Derek Evan Nee
• Michael Franklin
• John Jonides

The ability to inhibit inappropriate responses is central to cognitive control, but whether the same brain mechanisms mediate inhibition across different tasks is not known. We present evidence for a common set of frontal and parietal regions engaged in response inhibition across three tasks: a go/no-go task, a flanker task, and a stimulus–response compatibility task. Regions included bilateral anterior insula/frontal operculum and anterior prefrontal, right dorsolateral and premotor, and parietal cortices. Insula activity was positively correlated with interference costs in behavioral performance in each task. Principal components analysis showed a coherent pattern of individual differences in these regions that was also positively correlated with performance in all three tasks. However, correlations among tasks were low, for both brain activity and performance. We suggest that common interference detection and/or resolution mechanisms are engaged across tasks, and that inter-task correlations in behavioral performance are low because they conflate measurements of common mechanisms with measurements of individual biases unique to each task.

YNIMG Journal 2005 Journal Article

Increased sensitivity in neuroimaging analyses using robust regression

• Tor D. Wager
• Matthew C. Keller
• Steven C. Lacey
• John Jonides

Robust regression techniques are a class of estimators that are relatively insensitive to the presence of one or more outliers in the data. They are especially well suited to data that require large numbers of statistical tests and may contain outliers due to factors not of experimental interest. Both these issues apply particularly to neuroimaging data analysis. We use simulations to compare several robust techniques against ordinary least squares (OLS) regression, and we apply robust regression to second-level (group “random effects”) analyses in three fMRI datasets. Our results show that robust iteratively reweighted least squares (IRLS) at the 2nd level is a computationally efficient technique that both increases statistical power and decreases false positive rates in the presence of outliers. The benefits of IRLS are apparent with small samples (n = 10) and increase with larger sample sizes (n = 40) in the typical range of group neuroimaging experiments. When no true effects are present, IRLS controls false positive rates at an appropriate level. We show that IRLS can have substantial benefits in analysis of group data and in estimating hemodynamic response shapes from time series data. We provide software to implement IRLS in group neuroimaging analyses.

YNIMG Journal 2004 Journal Article

Neuroimaging studies of shifting attention: a meta-analysis

• Tor D Wager
• John Jonides
• Susan Reading

This paper reports a meta-analysis of neuroimaging studies of attention shifting and executive processes in working memory. We analyzed peak activation coordinates from 31 fMRI and PET studies of five types of shifting using kernel-based methods [NeuroImage 19 (2003) 513]. Analyses collapsing across different types of shifting gave more consistent results overall than analysis within individual types, suggesting a commonality across types of shifting. These areas shared substantial, significant overlap with regions derived from kernel-based analyses of reported peaks for executive processes in working memory (WM). The results suggest that there is a common set of brain regions active in diverse executive control operations, including medial prefrontal, superior and inferior parietal, medial parietal, and premotor cortices. However, within several of these regions, different types of switching produced spatially discriminable activation foci. Precise locations of meta analysis-derived regions from both attention shifting and working memory are defined electronically and may be used as regions of interest in future studies.

YNIMG Journal 2004 Journal Article

Selection requirements during verb generation: differential recruitment in older and younger adults

• Jonas Persson
• Ching-Yune C. Sylvester
• James K. Nelson
• Kathryn M. Welsh
• John Jonides
• Patricia A. Reuter-Lorenz

Age-related differences in cognitive performance are well documented. These differences are most pronounced during tasks with high demands on cognitive control, and it has been proposed that selective alteration of prefrontal activity is associated with cognitive changes in old age. Here, differences in the neural systems underlying selection requirements for older and younger adults were investigated using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). A verb generation task was used, and selection requirements were varied with regard to whether each noun could be associated with either few (scissors—cut) or many (ball—bounce, kick, throw…) competing alternatives. The two age groups showed statistically equivalent behavioral performance across the task conditions but marked differences in activation. Across both age groups, high selection demands activated several regions including bilateral frontal, left anterior frontal, left inferior temporal regions, and the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). Between-group comparisons using region-of-interest analyses revealed less activation for senior adults in left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), left inferior temporal gyrus, and the anterior cingulate and higher activation in right inferior frontal gyrus compared to young adults. These findings indicate age-related changes in multiple regions contributing to aspects of selection requirements during verb generation.

YNIMG Journal 2002 Journal Article

Temporal Sensitivity of Event-Related fMRI

• Luis Hernandez
• David Badre
• Douglas Noll
• John Jonides

The temporal resolution of event-related fMRI is limited by the low sampling rate of typical MR whole brain protocols and by the slow rate of the BOLD response. Within the assumptions of the General Linear Model, we explore the tolerance of regression analyses of fMRI data to errors in the timing of the model relative to the experimental data under a number of circumstances. Given the sensitivity of the analysis to temporal shifts of the model relative to the data, one can search for the time a neuronal event occurs with temporal resolution on the order of a few hundred milliseconds with 95% confidence. This confidence level is strongly dependent on the signal-to-noise ratio of the observed BOLD responses (approximately ±200 ms in our example of visual stimulation data collected at 1. 5 T).

YNIMG Journal 2001 Journal Article

Characterizing nonlinear BOLD responses in human visual cortex

• Tor D. Wager
• Thomas E. Nichols
• Richard Bryck
• John Jonides
• Edward E. Smith

YNIMG Journal 1997 Journal Article

A Parametric Study of Prefrontal Cortex Involvement in Human Working Memory

• Todd S. Braver
• Jonathan D. Cohen
• Leigh E. Nystrom
• John Jonides
• Edward E. Smith
• Douglas C. Noll

Although recent neuroimaging studies suggest that prefrontal cortex (PFC) is involved in working memory (WM), the relationship between PFC activity and memory load has not yet been well-described in humans. Here we use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to probe PFC activity during a sequential letter task in which memory load was varied in an incremental fashion. In all nine subjects studied, dorsolateral and left inferior regions of PFC were identified that exhibited a linear relationship between activity and WM load. Furthermore, these same regions were independently identified through direct correlations of the fMRI signal with a behavioral measure that indexes WM function during task performance. A second experiment, using whole-brain imaging techniques, both replicated these findings and identified additional brain regions showing a linear relationship with load, suggesting a distributed circuit that participates with PFC in subserving WM. Taken together, these results provide a “dose–response curve” describing the involvement of both PFC and related brain regions in WM function, and highlight the benefits of using graded, parametric designs in neuroimaging research.

YNIMG Journal 1996 Journal Article

A parametric study of prefrontal cortex involvement in human working memory

• Todd S. Braver
• Jonathan D. Cohen
• Leigh E. Nystrom
• John Jonides
• Edward E. Smith
• Douglas C. Noll

YNIMG Journal 1996 Journal Article

PET Evidence for an Amodal Verbal Working Memory System

• Eric H. Schumacher
• Erick Lauber
• Edward Awh
• John Jonides
• Edward E. Smith
• Robert A. Koeppe

Current models of verbal working memory assume that modality-specific representations are translated into phonological representations before entering the working memory system. We report an experiment that tests this assumption. Positron emission tomography measures were taken while subjects performed a verbal working memory task. Stimuli were presented either visually or aurally, and a visual or auditory search task, respectively, was used as a control. Results revealed an almost complete overlap between the active memory areas regardless of input modality. These areas included dorsolateral frontal, Broca's area, SMA, and premotor cortex in the left hemisphere; bilateral superior and posterior parietal cortices and anterior cingulateright cerebellum. These results correspond well with previous research and suggest that verbal working memory is modality independent and is mediated by a circuit involving frontal, parietal, and cerebellar mechanisms.

YNIMG Journal 1996 Journal Article

Temporal dynamics of cortical activity in verbal working memory

• Jonathan D. Cohen
• Todd S. Braver
• William M. Perlstein
• John Jonides
• Edward E. Smith
• Douglas C. Noll