Recruitment of the default mode network during a demanding act of executive control

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Abstract

In the human brain, a default mode or task-negative network shows reduced activity during many cognitive tasks, and is often associated with internally-directed processes such as mind wandering and thoughts about the self. In contrast to this task-negative pattern, we show increased activity during a large and demanding switch in task set. Furthermore, we employ multi-voxel pattern analysis and find that regions of interest within default mode network are encoding task-relevant information during task performance. Activity in this network may be driven by major revisions of cognitive context, whether internally or externally focused.

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Ben M Crittenden

Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge, United Kingdom

For correspondence
ben.crittenden@psych.ox.ac.uk

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Daniel J Mitchell

Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge, United Kingdom

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
John Duncan

Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge, United Kingdom

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

Ethics

Human subjects: Informed consent, and consent to publish, was obtained through the University of Cambridge ethics committee:CPREC (Cambridge Psychology Research Ethics) 2010.16.

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This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.