Dr. Lapate’s work examining lateral prefrontal (LPFC) function and emotional processing was published in Nature Communications. In this work, we asked whether LPFC causally promotes goal-directed behavior during emotional processing. To answer this question, we combined individualized TMS targeting with fMRI/MVPA obtained during a task that requires cognitive control as a function of affective signals, the Affective Go/NoGo (AGNG) task. We targeted LPFC w/ TMS (a putatively inhibitory protocol, cTBS) based on the individualized location of multivariate action-goal representations during the AGNG task, which was followed by fMRI scanning. We found that individualized cTBS to mid-LPFC (vs. a Control site) reduced action-goal information in mid-LPFC and impaired goal-oriented action (i.e. task performance), particularly during the processing of negative emotional cues. We also found that cTBS to mid-LPFC reduced the functional coupling between mid-LPFC and DMN nodes, including frontopolar cortex, which in turn correlated with the strength of LPFC action-goal signals.
Check out the work here: