This method allowed us to determine in which of the two selleck catalog conditions the typical frontal negativity pattern of the prestimulus

SME would be observed. This frontal negativity is thought to reflect the involvement of the left inferior prefrontal cortex (LIPC) in episodic encoding and is associated with subsequent memory recognition (Wagner et al. 1998, 1999; Otten et al. 2001). Involvement of the prefrontal cortex Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical (PFC) in prestimulus effects has been reported in a series of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies showing the crucial role of prefrontal cortex in processing of future events (Sakai and Passingham 2003, 2006; Haynes et al. 2007). In a first study using a task cueing paradigm similar to the one e-book presented in this article, Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical Sakai and colleagues identified the neural correlates of task sets, showing a pretask activation in the PFC related to the preparation of a specific task. The authors interpreted this

finding associating the activation of the anterior part of the PFC to the construction of higher order representations that are involved in the preparation of future task operations even without specific task items (Sakai and Passingham 2003). In a following study they showed the existence of a mechanism in the PFC that is involved in the representation Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical of task rules and revealed how this mechanism modulates subsequent cognitive performance through a rule-specific neural activity before the task execution (Sakai and Passingham 2006).

In a third study, they demonstrated the possibility to infer from the activity Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical of medial and lateral regions of the PFC which of two tasks Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical the subjects were intending to perform, showing that this area encodes intention-related information specific to the preparation of the future task (Haynes et al. 2007). Besides the involvement of PFC, midbrain and medial temporal regions were shown to play a role in predicting later recollection (Mackiewicz et al. 2006; Park and Rugg 2010). In a direct comparison of the influence of transient and sustained attentional processes on successful encoding, Reynolds et al. (2004) investigated the relation between item and task level processes and reported evidence for an enhanced activation Carfilzomib of the PFC during transient attention. Their results showed greater activation in the LIPC during task switching (task change at every trial) compared to the single task condition (same task throughout a block) and for subsequently remembered versus forgotten items. Further findings showing an increased activation of PFC during transient versus sustained attentional processes can be also found in the task switching research literature (Braver et al. 2003; Gladwin et al. 2006).