Distinctive Types of Aversiveness are Represented as the Same in a Portion of the Dorsal Anterior Cingulate Cortex: An fMRI Study with the Cue Paradigm

Abstract

Some studies have argued that dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) is generally activated in response to aversive information, including pain, negative affect, and cognitive conflict. Other studies claim that the dACC has subdivisions, and each division has a specific function. By manipulating emotionally and cognitively aversive cues, the present study determined whether the dACC is generally responsive to aversiveness or it has subdivisions for specific forms of aversiveness. A conjunction fMRI analysis showed that emotionally and cognitively aversive cues activated the same portion of the dACC. When these cues were contiguously presented, the region demonstrated additive activities, further supporting overlapped representation of two different aversiveness in the dACC. Additional effective connectivity analysis showed that the dACC was co-activated with different brain regions depending on the cue type, characterizing its mechanism of behavior control. Complementary multivariate analyses showed that reaction time was negatively correlated with activity of the dACC, and that activity of the dACC under the emotional cue was predicted by individual state anxiety score, but not under the cognitive cue. Those findings suggest that different types of aversive information are commonly represented by a portion of the dACC, which exerts its control over task-dependent brain regions for adaptive behaviors.

Funding Information: This study was supported by research grant from Japan Society for Promotions of Science to TM (#15J09321) and to MH (#14432598), and that from Japan Science and Technology Agency (#15656395).

Declaration of Interests: The authors declare that the study has been conducted without any conflicts of interest.

Ethics Approval Statement: Before the experiment, an experimenter provided a detailed description of the study and obtained informed consent from the participants. The study protocol was approved by the ethics committee of the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology. The participants received monetary rewards (5000 yen including transportation expense) for their participation.

Keywords: control signal, behavioral adjustment, emotion, cognition, conflict