• Antonino Vallesi, Eleonora Mastrorilli, Francesco Causin, Domenico D'Avella, and Alessandra Bertoldo.
• Department of Neuroscience, University of Padova, Italy; Centro di Neuroscienze Cognitive, University of Padova, Italy. Electronic address: antonino.vallesi@unipd.it.
• Neuroscience. 2016 Aug 4; 329: 349-62.

AbstractThe capacity to flexibly switch between different task rules has been previously associated with distributed fronto-parietal networks, predominantly in the left hemisphere for phasic switching sub-processes, and in the right hemisphere for more tonic aspects of task-switching, such as rule maintenance and management. It is thus likely that the white matter (WM) connectivity between these regions is critical in sustaining the flexibility required by task-switching. This study examined the relationship between WM microstructure in young adults and task-switching performance in different paradigms: classical shape-color, spatial and grammatical tasks. The main results showed an association between WM integrity in anterior portions of the corpus callosum (genu and body) and a sustained measure of task-switching performance. In particular, a higher fractional anisotropy and a lower radial diffusivity in these WM regions were associated with smaller mixing costs both in the spatial task-switching paradigm and in the shape-color one, as confirmed by a conjunction analysis. No association was found with behavioral measures obtained in the grammatical task-switching paradigm. The switch costs, a measure of phasic switching processes, were not correlated with WM microstructure in any task. This study shows that a more efficient inter-hemispheric connectivity within the frontal lobes favors sustained task-switching processes, especially with task contexts embedding non-verbal components.Copyright © 2016 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

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