Authors
Agostino, C. S., Kirschner, H., Janko, D., Carpino, E., Verhagen, L., Ullsperger, M.
Abstract
Conflict monitoring and error processing are fundamental mechanisms underlying cognitive control and decision-making, and have been consistently associated with increased activity in the anterior midcingulate cortex (aMCC). Despite the extensive literature supporting this association, there remains a substantial gap in establishing a causal relationship between the aMCC and cognitive control processes. In the present study, we used low-intensity transcranial ultrasound stimulation (TUS), an emerging technique that enables non-invasive, deep, and focal neuromodulation, to investigate the causal role of the aMCC in behavioral and electrophysiological markers of cognitive control. Nineteen participants received 5Hz rTUS targeting the aMCC and the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) on separate days, followed by performance of a Flanker task during EEG recording. Our findings demonstrate that TUS of aMCC modulated the relationship between conflict monitoring and the N2 component, but did not affect the coupling between error processing and the ERN, relative to the TUS of PCC, suggesting a dissociable contribution from both regions to cognitive control. These results were further supported by exploratory drift diffusion model (DDM) analyses, which revealed that, for most participants, TUS of aMCC enhanced suppression of flanker distractors. Importantly, after TUS of aMCC, but also PCC, we observed higher accuracy during early compared with later task blocks, corroborating previous findings suggesting that TUS effects are temporally dynamic and characterized by a limited post-stimulation window.
Preprint server:
bioRxiv
The authors list and abstract were imported from bioRxiv on 13 Aug 2026.
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