Performance Of The Tower Of Hanoi And Its Relationship To The Prefrontal Cortex Activity
Date
2016-05
Authors
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
The prefrontal cortex (PFC) is the area in front of the brain that makes humans
cognitively aware of the environment. The PFC is responsible for vital aspects of
cognition such as decision-making, attention, and most importantly executive
function. Executive function relates abilities to differentiate thought processes,
imagine future consequences of goals, work towards a concrete goal through strategy
and several more cognitive aspects of conscientious thought. Through executive
function, producing a movement goal creates motor planning. Motor planning is the
process related to preparation prior to the movement itself. Levels of activity in the
PFC can be monitored through brain imaging equipment such as the functional nearinfrared
spectroscopy (fNIRs). FNIRs is a non-invasive brain imaging technique
where sensors emit light from a headband placed on a participants forehead. This
technique measures the amount of infrared light that reflects from the PFC and
through that researchers can convert that infrared light reading into oxygenatedhemoglobin
(oxy-hb) levels of the brain. Having higher oxy-hb levels equate to a
higher level of cerebral blood flow in the brain. Oxy-hb levels were compared
between two different states: manual and computerized Tower of Hanoi (ToH). ToH is
a cognitive planning game where a participant has to place different size discs together
on multiple discs. The purpose of this study is to see if there are differences in oxy-hb
between the manual and computerized ToH. Nine participants between the ages of 18-
24 completed 20 trials of ToH, ten being manual and ten being computerized. All
while being monitored by the fNIRS system. Results showed that eight out of the nine participants had relatively higher oxy-hb in the manual version of the ToH. This
indicates that manual ToH results in a higher level of executive function which than
results in a higher level of motor planning over the computerized ToH. Future studies
hope to employ this study to expand knowledge about disorders with executive
function deficits such as Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD).
Description
Keywords
tower of hanoi, prefrontal cortex, exercise science