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Graduate Student Award Winner 

Intracranial EEG Correlates of Concurrent Demands on Cognitive Stability and Flexibility

Poster Session F - Tuesday, March 10, 2026, 8:00 – 10:00 am PDT, Fairview/Kitsilano Ballroom

Jinjiang Zhang¹ (), Erin Burns, Aaron Earle-Richardson, Raphael Geddert, Nicole Liddle, Birgit Frauscher, Derek Southwell, Tobias Egner, Gregory Cogan; ¹Duke University

Two core capacities of cognitive control are cognitive stability (focusing attention on task-relevant stimuli while ignoring distracters) and cognitive flexibility (shifting between different task sets to guide behavior). Whether these capacities arise from distinct or overlapping neural mechanisms remains unclear, as prior studies investigated them in isolation using macroscale neural data (fMRI, scalp EEG) that lack sufficient temporal/spatial resolution. We obtained mesoscale neural data (iEEG) from 17 epilepsy patients (mean age=31, 7 females) during a local/global Navon letter task that independently varied demands on stability (congruent vs. incongruent stimuli) and flexibility (repeating vs. switching tasks) via trial-proportion manipulations. Subjects demonstrated robust behavioral congruency effects and switch costs that were selectively modulated by the proportions of incongruent trials and switch trials, respectively. We examined high-frequency (70-150 Hz) activity in lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC) electrodes. Activity in most task-sensitive electrodes (N=29/47) was modulated by stimulus congruency and/or task switching demands, with effects emerging ~500ms post-stimulus. Some electrodes displayed exclusive congruency or switching effects (N=20/29), while others showed mixed selectivity via additive or interactive effects (N=10/29). A linear-discriminant classifier was able to decode both congruency (60% accuracy) and task switching (64% accuracy) processes from the LPFC electrode population, with classification accuracy for each process being selectively modulated by demands (proportion of incongruent/switch trials) on that specific process but not the other. These results demonstrate that LPFC employs a combination of domain-specific and domain-general neural ensembles to mediate independent, concurrent adjustments in cognitive stability and flexibility.

Topic Area: EXECUTIVE PROCESSES: Goal maintenance & switching