# Frontal Lobe Injury and Executive Control of Cognition and Emotion

> **NIH VA I01** · VA NORTHERN CALIFORNIA HEALTH CARE SYS · 2020 · —

## Abstract

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a serious psychiatric condition that affects a substantial number
of military personnel who served in Afghanistan and Iraq. Over 30% of all OEF/OIF/OND Veterans who
receive health care from the VA have been diagnosed with PTSD. The disorder is characterized by
symptom clusters of re-experiencing or intrusion, hyperarousal, avoidance, and negative alterations in
cognition. In addition to these distressing emotional and mood problems, impairments in attention and
executive control can be observed. Impairments in these frontal lobe functions could, in turn, have a
negative impact on social and occupational activities. Recent studies show that PTSD is associated with
deficits in highly specific frontal lobe functions, such as response inhibition and sustained attention.
These cognitive deficits are strongly correlated with symptom severity. Conversely, other executive
control processes, including interference resolution and error monitoring, are intact. Little is known about
why these dissociations occur, and what their underlying neural mechanisms might be. The current
project will extend previous findings in the OEF/OIF Veteran population by asking why this specific
pattern of spared and impaired frontal lobe functions is observed, and how targeted task manipulations
such as cues and rewards might improve performance. The proposed studies will investigate the
cognitive and neural mechanisms of three cognitive domains that are difficult for Veterans with PTSD: (1)
staying “on task”, the ability to focus on the task at hand without mind wandering; (2) response
inhibition, the ability to withhold inappropriate motor responses; (3) distractor resistance, the ability to
filter out extraneous stimuli to maintain items in working memory. The project will use a direct measure of
the brain's electrical activity to determine when in the information processing stream potential
weaknesses occur. This is a critical element, because knowing if a particular deficit is associated with
early suppression of distractors, sustained attention, and/or response inhibition may inform future
therapeutic approaches. The project will also record electroencephalographic (EEG) activity at rest to
examine possible changes in connectivity associated with PTSD. The relationship between off-task
cognition (“mind wandering”), fluctuations of attention, and trauma-related thoughts and memories will be
explored. The proposed studies will contribute to larger efforts to characterize this Veteran population
by including PhenX common data elements and easily replicated methods that can be implemented at
other research sites. An innovative aspect of the current proposal is its novel approach to resting state
EEG, which is easier and less expensive to collect than resting state fMRI. The observed patterns of
EEG network activity will be related to specific “phenotypes” of resting state cognition as determined by
the validated Amsterdam Resting-Stat...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9856934
- **Project number:** 5I01CX000566-08
- **Recipient organization:** VA NORTHERN CALIFORNIA HEALTH CARE SYS
- **Principal Investigator:** DIANE SWICK
- **Activity code:** I01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** VA
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** —
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2012-10-01 → 2022-03-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9856934

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9856934, Frontal Lobe Injury and Executive Control of Cognition and Emotion (5I01CX000566-08). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9856934. Licensed CC0.

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