Correlations between measures of executive attention and cortical thickness of left posterior middle frontal gyrus - a dichotic listening study

doi:10.1186/1744-9081-5-41

Behavioral and Brain Functions

Volume 5

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Ystad M
Lundervold A
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Short paper

Correlations between measures of executive attention and cortical thickness of left posterior middle frontal gyrus - a dichotic listening study

Martin Andersson¹^,2 , Martin Ystad³ , Arvid Lundervold³^,4 and Astri J Lundervold¹^,2

¹Department of Biological and Medical Psychology, University of Bergen, Norway

²Kavli's Research Centre for Ageing and Dementia, Haraldsplass Deaconess Hospital, Bergen, Norway

³Department of Biomedicine, Neuroinformatics and Image Analysis Laboratory, University of Bergen, Norway

⁴Department of Radiology, Haukeland University Hospital, Bergen, Norway

author email corresponding author email

Behavioral and Brain Functions 2009, 5:41doi:10.1186/1744-9081-5-41


Published:	1 October 2009

Abstract

Background

The frontal lobe has been associated to a wide range of cognitive control functions and is also vulnerable to degeneration in old age. A recent study by Thomsen and colleagues showed a difference between a young and old sample in grey matter density and activation in the left middle frontal cortex (MFC) and performance on a dichotic listening task. The present study investigated this brain behaviour association within a sample of healthy older individuals, and predicted a positive correlation between performance in a condition requiring executive attention and measures of grey matter structure of the posterior left MFC.

Methods

A dichotic listening forced attention paradigm was used to measure attention control functions. Subjects were instructed to report only the left or the right ear syllable of a dichotically presented consonant-vowel syllable pair. A conflict situation appears when subjects are instructed to report the left ear stimulus, caused by the conflict with the bottom-up, stimulus-driven right ear advantage. Overcoming this processing conflict was used as a measure of executive attention. Thickness and volumes of frontal lobe regions were derived from automated segmentation of 3D magnetic resonance image acquisitions.

Results

The results revealed a statistically significant positive correlation between the thickness measure of the left posterior MFC and performance on the dichotic listening measures of executive attention. Follow-up analyses showed that this correlation was only statistically significant in the subgroup that showed the typical bottom-up, stimulus-driven right ear advantage.

Conclusion

The results suggest that the left MFC is a part of an executive attention network, and that the dichotic listening forced attention paradigm may be a feasible tool for assessing subtle attentional dysfunctions in older adults.