Research article summary:

Practice and difficulty evoke anatomically and pharmacologically dissociable brain activation dynamics.

Abstract Extract:
Brain activation is adaptive to task difficulty and practice. We used functional MRI to map brain systems activated by an object-location learning task in 24 healthy elderly volunteers each scanned following placebo and two of four active drugs studied. ... (Full abstract text below)

Published 2003Feb in Journal: Cereb Cortex (Language : eng)

Full Pubmed Extract

This information was retrieved, real-time, on your behalf from the public area of the Pubmed website:

1. Cereb Cortex. 2003 Feb;13(2):144-54

Practice and difficulty evoke anatomically and pharmacologically dissociable brain activation dynamics.

Bullmore E, Suckling J, Zelaya F, Long C, Honey G, Reed L, Routledge C, Ng V, Fletcher P, Brown J, Williams SC

University of Cambridge, Department of Psychiatry, Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge CB2 2QQ. etb23@cam.ac.uk

Brain activation is adaptive to task difficulty and practice. We used functional MRI to map brain systems activated by an object-location learning task in 24 healthy elderly volunteers each scanned following placebo and two of four active drugs studied. We distinguished a fronto-striatal system adaptive to difficulty from a posterior system adaptive to practice. Fronto-striatal response to increased cognitive load was significantly attenuated by scopolamine, sulpiride and methylphenidate; practice effects were not modulated by these drugs but were enhanced by diazepam. We also found enhancement by methylphenidate, and attenuation by sulpiride, of load response in premotor, cingulate and parietal regions comprising a spatial attention network. Difficulty and practice evoke anatomically and pharmacologically dissociable brain activation dynamics, which are probably mediated by different neurotransmitter systems in humans.

PMID : 12507945 [PubMed - Indexed for MEDLINE]

This information is obtained from the National Library of Medicine (NLM). Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright. Type "NLM copyright" into Google for more information.

Full Author Information

First Name	LastName	Initials
Ed	Bullmore	E
John	Suckling	J
Fernando	Zelaya	F
Chris	Long	C
Garry	Honey	G
Laurence	Reed	L
Carol	Routledge	C
Virginia	Ng	V
Paul	Fletcher	P
John	Brown	J
Steve C R	Williams	SC

Affiliation: University of Cambridge, Department of Psychiatry, Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge CB2 2QQ. etb23@cam.ac.uk

3rd Party provider links

Click the links below to go to related 3rd party information:

MESH categories and related page links

This article was linked to the MESH categories shown on the left below. The links on the right are related Memletics pages.

Links for this article

For links to places where you can get the full text of this article see links. Note there may be a subscription or fee required for access to the full text.

New! Using similar technology to this site, we have launched find-health-articles.com, targeting over 1 million health research article abstracts.

Here are some articles related to this one (by title keywords):

Transfer of sensorimotor adaptation between different movement categories.

Does tobacco marketing undermine the influence of recommended parenting in discouraging adolescents from smoking?

Spatiotemporal dynamics of modality-specific and supramodal word processing.

The Psychiatric Rehabilitation Beliefs, Goals, and Practices Scale: sensitivity to change.

Primary care practices are full of surprises!

Plasticity and corticofugal modulation for hearing in adult animals.

The minds eye: functional MR imaging evaluation of golf motor imagery.

Human declarative memory formation: segregating rhinal and hippocampal contributions.

Effects of practice on executive control investigated with fMRI.

The effect of background noise on P300 to suprathreshold stimuli.

>>> Get more research article abstracts like these, or browse abstracts.

Keywords in this article:

activated, activation, active, adaptive, anatomically, attention, attenuated, attenuation, brain, cingulate, cognitive, comprising, diazepam, different, difficulty, dissociable, distinguished, drugs, dynamics, effects, elderly, enhanced, enhancement, evoke, following, four, fronto, functional, healthy, increased, learning, load, location, map, mediated, methylphenidate, modulated, mri, network, neurotransmitter, not, object, parietal, pharmacologically, placebo, posterior, practice, premotor, probably, regions, response, scanned, scopolamine, spatial, striatal, studied, sulpiride, systems, task, two, volunteers

Also, see our new free speed reading online course (beta version)