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The Demands of Beginning of Extended Tasks are Categorically Different from Control Demands During Their Subsequent Execution

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

Elif Oymagil^1,2 (), Tamer Gezici^1,2, Adem Yazıcı^1,2, Berhan F. Akgür^1,2, İpek Çiftçi^1,2, Ausaf A. Farooqui^1,2,3; ¹Bilkent University, Ankara, Türkiye, ²Aysel Sabuncu Brain Research Center, Ankara, Türkiye, ³National Magnetic Resonance Research Center, Ankara, Türkiye

Neuroscientific accounts of cognitive control fundamentally center on the activation of frontoparietal regions in response to diverse task demands. Typically, these cognitive control processes are instantiated within the framework of overarching, extended tasks, where they are implemented as part of a larger, coordinated set of control interventions. Studies have demonstrated the presence of goal-directed, higher-level programs that are established at the initiation of such extended tasks; these programs subsume the subsequent execution of the task and bring about this coordinated set of control interventions. Difficult task episodes that require a complex set of control processes will also require a complex higher-level program to organize and bring about this complex set of control processes. Although it is well-known that the frontoparietal regions activate during the execution of such difficult episodes when more complex control processes are needed, what happens at the beginning of such episodes, when a more complex higher-level program is needed, remains unknown. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and five different experiments, we show that instantiating complex higher-level programs deactivates the very same frontoparietal regions that activate during control processes. This distinction between the demands of the higher-level programs versus control processes also extended to psychophysiological signatures. Pupil diameter, well known to increase to control processes, decreased when more demanding, higher-level programs were being instantiated. Collectively, we show that the cognitive demand related to instantiating such higher-level programs is categorically different from control demands during the subsequent execution of extended tasks. This study was funded by TÜBİTAK 1001-grant:120K924.

Topic Area: EXECUTIVE PROCESSES: Goal maintenance & switching