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Full-Text Articles in Psychology
Physical Aggressiveness And Gray Matter Deficits In Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex, David S. Chester, Donald R. Lynam, Richard Milich, C. Nathan Dewall
Physical Aggressiveness And Gray Matter Deficits In Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex, David S. Chester, Donald R. Lynam, Richard Milich, C. Nathan Dewall
Psychology Faculty Publications
What causes individuals to hurt others? Since the famous case of Phineas Gage, lesions of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) have been reliably linked to physically aggressive behavior. However, it is unclear whether naturally-occurring deficits in VMPFC, among normal individuals, might have widespread consequences for aggression. Using voxel based morphometry, we regressed gray matter density from the brains of 138 normal female and male adults onto their dispositional levels of physical aggression, verbal aggression, and sex, simultaneously. Physical, but not verbal, aggression was associated with reduced gray matter volume in the VMPFC and to a lesser extent, frontopolar cortex. Participants …
Common And Distinct Mechanisms Of Cognitive Flexibility In Prefrontal Cortex, Chobok Kim, Nathan F. Johnson, Sara E. Cilles, Brian T. Gold
Common And Distinct Mechanisms Of Cognitive Flexibility In Prefrontal Cortex, Chobok Kim, Nathan F. Johnson, Sara E. Cilles, Brian T. Gold
Neuroscience Faculty Publications
The human ability to flexibly alternate between tasks represents a central component of cognitive control. Neuroimaging studies have linked task switching with a diverse set of prefrontal cortex (PFC) regions, but the contributions of these regions to various forms of cognitive flexibility remain largely unknown. Here, subjects underwent functional brain imaging while they completed a paradigm that selectively induced stimulus, response, or cognitive set switches in the context of a single task decision performed on a common set of stimuli. Behavioral results indicated comparable reaction time costs associated with each switch type. Domain-general task-switching activation was observed in the inferior …