Abstract
The midfrontal cortex, and particularly the anterior cingulate gyrus, appears active in many studies of functional imaging. Various models have competed to explain the functions of the anterior cingulate in relation to its patterns of activation. We believe that the concept of self-regulation is valuable in considering the role of the cingulate. The sensitivity of the cingulate to both reward and pain, and evidence for cingulate coupling to cognitive and emotional areas during task performance, support this identification. Self-regulation is a very broad concept that does not lend itself very well to specific models or tests, but it does provide a framework for examining development. We trace the role of the midfrontal cortex in evolution and infant development. Both genes and environment influence self-regulation. The presence of both genetic and environmental effects raises the issue of their interaction, which we discuss in relation to the dopamine 4 receptor gene and parenting methods. The role of the midfrontal cortex in self-regulation allows us to consider both brain networks common to all people and network efficiency underlying individual differences in behavior. This research was supported by NIMH Grant HD5801 to Georgia State University and by a grant from the Dana Foundation for the study of the arts.
Article PDF
References
Allman, J. M., Watson, K. K., Tetreault, N. A., & Hakeem, A. Y. (2005). Intuition and autism: A possible role for Von Economo neurons. Trends in Cognitive Science, 9, 367–373.
Bakermans-Kranenburg, M. J., & van IJzendoorn, M. H. (2006). Gene—environment interaction of the dopamine D4 receptor (DRD4) and observed maternal insensitivity predicting externalizing behavior in preschoolers. Developmental Psychobiology, 48, 406–409.
Beane, M., & Marrocco, R. (2004). Cholinergic and noradrenergic inputs to the posterior parietal cortex modulate the components of exogenous attention. In M. I. Posner (Ed.), Cognitive neuroscience of attention (pp. 313–325). New York: Guilford.
Beauregard, M., Levesque, J., & Bourgouin, P. (2001). Neural correlates of conscious self-regulation of emotion. Journal of Neuroscience, 21, RC165.
Berger, A., Tzur, G., & Posner, M. I. (2006). Infant brains detect arithmetic errors. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 103, 12649–12653.
Blasi, G., Mattay, V. S., Bertolino, A., Elvevåg, B., Callicott, J. H., Das, S., et al. (2005). Effect of catechol-o-methyltransferase val158met genotype on attentional control. Journal of Neuroscience, 25, 5038–5045.
Botvinick, M. M. (2007). Conflict monitoring and decision making: Reconciling two perspectives on anterior cingulate function. Journal of Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 7, 356–366.
Botvinick, M. M., Braver, T. S., Barch, D. M., Carter, C. S., & Cohen, J. D. (2001). Conflict monitoring and cognitive control. Psychological Review, 108, 624–652.
Bush, G., Luu, P., & Posner, M. I. (2000). Cognitive and emotional influences in anterior cingulate cortex. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 4, 215–222.
Canli, T., Omura, K., Haas, B. W., Fallgatter, A., Todd, R., Constable, R. T., & Lesch, K. P. (2005). Beyond affect: A role for genetic variation of the serotonin transporter in neural activation during a cognitive attention task. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 102, 12224–12229.
Chang, F., & Burns, B. M. (2005). Attention in preschoolers: Associations with effortful control and motivation. Child Development, 76, 247–263.
Crottaz-Herbette, S., & Menon, V. (2006). Where and when the anterior cingulate cortex modulates attentional response: Combined fMRI and ERP evidence. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 18, 766–780.
Davidson, M. C., Amso, D., Anderson, L. C., & Diamond, A. (2006). Development of cognitive control and executive functions from 4 to 13 years: Evidence from manipulations of memory, inhibition, and task switching. Neuropsychologia, 44, 2037–2078.
Dehaene, S., Posner, M. I., & Tucker, D. M. (1994). Localization of a neural system for error detection and compensation. Psychological Science, 5, 303–305.
Diamond, A. (1990). Developmental time course in human infants and infant monkeys and the neural basis of inhibitory control in reaching. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 608, 637–676.
Diamond, A., Briand, L., Fossella, J., & Gehlbach, L. (2004). Genetic and neurochemical modulation of prefrontal cognitive functions in children. American Journal of Psychiatry, 161, 125–132.
Ding, Y. C., Chi, H. C., Grady, D. L., Morishima, A., Kidd, J. R., Kidd, K. K., et al. (2002). Evidence of positive selection acting at the human dopamine receptor D4 gene locus. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 99, 309–314.
Dosenbach, N. U. F., Fair, D. A., Miezin, F. M., Cohen, A. L., Wenger, K. K., Dosenbach, R. A. T., et al. (2007). Distinct brain networks for adaptive and stable task control in humans, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104, 11073–11078.
Drevets, W. C., & Raichle, M. E. (1998). Reciprocal suppression of regional blood flow during emotional versus higher cognitive processes: Implications for interactions between emotion and cognition. Cognition & Emotion, 12, 353–385.
Dumas, T., Hostick, U., Wu, H., Spaltenstein, J., Ghatak, C., Nguyen, J., & Kentros, C. (2005). Maximizing the anatomical specificity of native neuronal promoters by a subtractive transgenic technique. Society for Neuroscience Abstracts, No. 228.6. Online.
Eisenberger, N. I., Lieberman, M. D., & Williams, K. D. (2003). Does rejection hurt? An fMRI study of social exclusion. Science, 302, 290–292.
Ellis, L. K., & Rothbart, M. K. (2001). Revision of the early adolescent temperament questionnaire. Paper presented at the 2001 meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Ellis, L. K., Rothbart, M. K., & Posner, M. I. (2004). Individual differences in executive attention predict self-regulation and adolescent psychosocial behaviors Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1031, 337–340.
Etkin, A., Egner, T., Peraza, D. M., Kandel, E. R., & Hirsch, J. (2006). Resolving emotional conflict: A role for the rostral anterior cingulate cortex in modulating activity in the amygdala. Neuron, 51, 871–882.
Fan, J., Flombaum, J. I., McCandliss, B. D., Thomas, K. M., & Posner, M. I. (2003). Cognitive and brain consequences of conflict. NeuroImage, 18, 42–57.
Fan, J., Fossella, J. A., Sommer, T., & Posner, M. I. (2003). Mapping the genetic variation of executive attention onto brain activity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 100, 7406–7411.
Fan, J., McCandliss, B. D., Sommer, T., Raz, A., & Posner, M. I. (2002). Testing the efficiency and independence of attentional networks. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 14, 340–347.
Fan, J., Wu, Y., Fossella, J., & Posner, M. I. (2001). Assessing the heritability of attentional networks. BMC Neuroscience, 2, 14.
Fonagy, P., & Target, M. (2002). Early intervention and the development of self-regulation. Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 22, 307–335.
Fossella, J., Sommer, T., Fan, J., Wu, Y., Swanson, J. M., Pfaff, D. W., & Posner, M. I. (2002). Assessing the molecular genetics of attention networks. BMC Neuroscience, 3, 14.
Gerardi-Caulton, G. (2000). Sensitivity to spatial conflict and the development of self-regulation in children 24–36 months of age. Developmental Science, 3, 397–404.
González, C., Fuentes, L. J., Carranza, J. A., & Estévez, A. F. (2001). Temperament and attention in the self-regulation of 7-year-old children. Personality & Individual Differences, 30, 931–946.
Hampton, A. N., & O’Doherty, J. P. (2007). Decoding the neural substrates of reward-related decision making with functional MRI. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104, 1377–1382.
Han, C. J., O’Tuathaigh, C. M., & Koch, C. (2004). A practical assay for attention in mice. In M. I. Posner (Ed.), Cognitive neuroscience of attention (pp. 294–312). New York: Guilford.
Kampe, K. K. W., Frith, C. D., & Frith, U. (2003). “Hey John”: Signals conveying communicative intention toward the self activate brain regions associated with“mentalizing,” regardless of modality. Journal of Neuroscience, 23, 5258–5263.
Ochsner, K. N., Kossyln, S. M., Cosgrove, G. R., Cassem, E. H., Price, B. H., Nierenberg, A. A., & Rauch, S. L. (2001). Deficits in visual cognition and attention following bilateral anterior cingulotomy. Neuropsychologia, 39, 219–230.
Posner, M. I., & Rothbart, M. K. (2007a). Educating the human brain. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Posner, M. I., & Rothbart, M. K. (2007b). Research on attention networks as a model for the integration of psychological science. Annual Review of Psychology, 58, 1–23.
Posner, M. I., Sheese, B. E., Odludas, Y., & Tang, Y. (2007). Analyzing and shaping neural networks. Neural Networks, 19, 1422–1429.
Rainville, P., Duncan, G. H., Price, D. D., Carrier, B., & Bushnell, M. C. (1997). Pain affect encoded in human anterior cingulate but not somatosensory cortex. Science, 277, 968–971.
Reuter, M., Ott, U., Vaitl, D., & Hennig, J. (2007). Impaired executive control is associated with a variation in the promoter region of the tryptophan hydroxylase 2 gene. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 19, 401–408.
Rothbart, M. K., Ellis, L. K., & Posner, M. I. (2004). Temperament and self-regulation. In R. F. Baumeister & K. D. Vohs (Eds.), Handbook of self-regulation: Research, theory, and applications (pp. 357–370). New York: Guilford.
Rothbart, M. K., Ellis, L. K., Rueda, M. R., & Posner, M. I. (2003). Developing mechanisms of temperamental effortful control. Journal of Personality, 71, 1113–1143.
Rothbart, M. K., & Rueda, M. R. (2005). The development of effortful control. In U. Mayr, E. Awh, & S. W. Keele (Eds.), Developing individuality in the human brain: A tribute to Michael I. Posner (pp. 167–188). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Rueda, M. R., Posner, M. I., & Rothbart, M. K. (2004). Attentional control and self-regulation. In R. F. Baumeister & K. D. Vohs (Edds.), Handbook of self-regulation: Research, theory, and applications (pp. 283–300). New York: Guilford.
Rueda, M. R., Rothbart, M. K., McCandliss, B. D., Saccomanno, L., & Posner, M. I. (2005). Training, maturation, and genetic influences on the development of executive attention. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 102, 14931–14936.
Sheese, B. E., Rothbart, M. K., Posner, M. I., White, L. K., & Fraundorf, S. H. (2007). Executive attention and self-regulation in infancy. Manuscript submitted for publication.
Sheese, B. E., Voelker, P., Rothbart, M. K., & Posner, M. I. (in press). Caregiver quality interacts with genetic variation to influence aspects of toddler temperament. Development & Psychopathology.
Whittle, S. L. (2007). The neurobiological correlates of temperament in early adolescents. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Melbourne, Australia.
Wynn, K. (1992). Addition and subtraction by human infants. Nature, 358, 749–750.
Zilles, K. (2005). Evolution of the human brain and comparative cyto- and receptor architecture. In S. Dehaene, J.-R. Duhamel, M. D. Hauser, & G. Rizzolatti (Eds.), From monkey brain to human brain (pp. 41–56). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, Bradford Books.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
This research was supported by NIMH Grant HD5801 to Georgia State University and by a grant from the Dana Foundation for the study of the arts.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Posner, M.I., Rothbart, M.K., Sheese, B.E. et al. The anterior cingulate gyrus and the mechanism of self-regulation. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience 7, 391–395 (2007). https://doi.org/10.3758/CABN.7.4.391
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/CABN.7.4.391