THE ROLE OF THE ANTERIOR CINGULATE IN AUTOMATIC AND CONTROLLED PROCESSES - A DEVELOPMENTAL NEUROANATOMICAL STUDY

This study examines the role of the anterior cingulate in the developm ent of attention. Task performance relying predominantly on either aut omatic or controlled processes was correlated with magnetic resonance imaging based measures of the anterior cingulate in 26 normal children ages 5 to 16 years. Attentional measures were assessed with a visual discrimination paradigm. Parasagittal slices from a 3-D, T1-weighted v olume data set were used to obtain area measurements of the anterior c ingulate. Response latencies decreased with age for both tasks. There were significant correlations between attentional performance and righ t, but not left, anterior cingulate measures. Performance was faster a nd more accurate during trials requiring predominantly controlled proc esses for those children with larger right anterior cingulate measures . The results are consistent with adult neuroimaging findings of activ ation in the right anterior cingulate during attention tasks and with lesion studies implicating greater right hemisphere involvement in att entional processes. (C) 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.