In this episode, we discussed a region in the brain known as the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), which is important for several cognitive functions including emotional regulation, attention allocation, and predictive coding.
Listen to the episode here
The ACC is located in the front part of the brain, surrounding the corpus callosum from https://www.flintrehab.com/anterior-cingulate-cortex-damage/
This episode was largely based on a recently released preprint paper:
“Prediction error signals in ACC guide task-switching” (Cole et al., 2022) https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.27.518096v1.full.pdf
The ACC is involved in anxiety:
”Altered Development of Amygdala-Anterior Cingulate Cortex Connectivity in Anxious Youth and Young Adults” (Kujawa et al., 2016) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4979579/
“Activation of ACC ameliorates anxiety in a preclinical model of foetal alcohol spectrum disorders” (Hwang & Hashimoto-Torri, 2022) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-022-01789-1#:~:text=One%20of%20the%20brain%20regions,disorders%20%5B15%2C%2016%5D.
“Short-term meditation increases blood flow in anterior cingulate cortex and insula” (Tang et al., 2015) https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00212
The ACC is involved in high-order processes such as making predictions and decisions and judging the value of actions:
Choice, uncertainty and value in prefrontal and cingulate cortex (Matthew F S Rushworth & Timothy E J Behrens, 2008) https://www.nature.com/articles/nn2066
The anterior cingulate cortex directs exploration of alternative strategies (Tervo et al., 2021) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0896627321001987
Feedback-related negativity observed in rodent anterior cingulate cortex Warren et al (2015) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0928425714000424?via=ihub
The ACC contributes to generating an internal model of the world:
The Anterior Cingulate Cortex Predicts Future States to Mediate Model-Based Action Selection (Akam., et al 2021) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0896627320308096
Dissociable effects of surprise and model update in parietal and anterior cingulate cortex (O'Reilly et al., 2013) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23986499/
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