Schedule of Events | Symposia

Decoding Cognitive Control Dynamics: Neural Evidence of Inertia in Cognitive Control Adjustments Following Goal Changes

Poster Session A - Saturday, March 29, 2025, 3:00 – 5:00 pm EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom

Ivan Grahek¹ (ivan_grahek@brown.edu), Xiamin Leng¹, Atsushi Kikumoto², Ainsley Bonin³, Amitai Shenhav¹; ¹University of California, Berkeley, ²Brown Univeristy, ³University of Pennsylvania

As our goals change (e.g., transitioning from chatting with a colleague to attending a work meeting), we adjust how we process information and act. Such flexibility requires adjustments in cognitive control states that align our cognition with our current goals (e.g., adjusting attention and response caution). Here, we leverage computational modeling and EEG decoding to show that such control adjustments take time, leading to goal-suboptimal performance. Participants (N=41) performed the Random Dot Motion task under two goals: maximizing either speed or accuracy. They performed the task in blocks in which these goals were either fixed or varying. We fit drift diffusion models to the data to infer the control states corresponding to each of the goals. Drift rates (processing efficiency) and thresholds (caution) were higher for the accuracy versus speed goal. However, the differences between these control states were substantially reduced in varying blocks, suggestive of gradual movement between control states. Do test this hypothesis more directly, we sought to decode control states from EEG signals. We trained time-resolved decoders to distinguish between the speed and accuracy goals. The two control states were reliably decodable when goals were fixed, but decoding accuracy degraded substantially when goals varied. Critically, decoding accuracy in varying blocks increased with more repetitions of the same goal, evidencing gradual adjustments of control. These results reveal that once our goals change, the neural states corresponding to different control states gradually move from their current toward the new target state. The speed of this movement contrains goal flexibility.

Topic Area: EXECUTIVE PROCESSES: Goal maintenance & switching