Left Prefrontal Cortex Supports the Recognition of Meaningful Patterns in Ambiguous Stimuli

Author(s)
Grégory Bartel, Martin Marko, Imani Rameses, Claus Lamm, Igor Riecansky
Abstract

Processing of ambiguous visual stimuli has been associated with an increased activation of the left lateral prefrontal cortex (PFC) in neuroimaging studies. Nevertheless, the functional role of prefrontal activity in this process is not fully understood. In this experiment we asked participants to evaluate ambiguous inkblots from the Rorschach test, while stimulating the left lateral PFC using excitatory anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). In addition, visual insight ability was assessed as a control measure requiring visual and conceptual restructuring and convergent thinking rather than divergent idea generation employed to interpret the equivocal Rorschach inkblots. Using a randomized double-blind design, we demonstrated that anodal tDCS increased the number of meaningful patterns recognized in the inkblots but had no significant effect on visual insight. These findings support the role of left lateral PFC in the processing of ambiguous visual information and object recognition. More generally, we discuss that the PFC may be involved in the mechanisms supporting the activation of stored visual and semantic representations in order to compensate for less informative bottom-up inputs and thus facilitate flexible cognition and idea generation.

Organisation(s)
Department of Cognition, Emotion, and Methods in Psychology, Vienna Cognitive Science Hub
External organisation(s)
Slovak Academy of Sciences (SAS), Universität Wien, Comenius University Bratislava
Journal
Frontiers in Neuroscience
Volume
14
No. of pages
8
ISSN
1662-4548
DOI
https://doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2020.00152
Publication date
02-2020
Peer reviewed
Yes
Austrian Fields of Science 2012
501014 Neuropsychology
Keywords
ASJC Scopus subject areas
Neuroscience(all)
Portal url
https://ucris.univie.ac.at/portal/en/publications/left-prefrontal-cortex-supports-the-recognition-of-meaningful-patterns-in-ambiguous-stimuli(cd3f8982-1d0a-4085-ba10-a909695dd596).html