Emergence of task information from dynamic network interactions in the human brain

How cognitive task behavior is generated by brain network interactions is a central question in neuroscience. We hypothesized that cognitive task behavior emerges from spatiotemporal activity patterns flowing from cognitive control networks (CCNs) – large-scale brain networks that represent task goals – to the motor network. We tested this hypothesis by first localizing the spatiotemporal signatures of task information in the human brain using MRI-individualized source electroencephalography and dynamic decoding. We then applied a novel network modeling approach to simulate the flow of task-evoked activity over causally interpretable resting-state functional connections (dynamic, lagged, direct and directional) to accurately predict empirical response information dynamics underlying behavior. Simulated network lesions confirmed our hypothesis that CCNs are the primary causal drivers of response information, transitioning from early dorsal attention network-dominated sensory-to-response transformation to later collaborative CCN engagement during task response selection. These results reveal the dynamic network interactions by which CCNs produce cognitive task behavior. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest.