The present article on executive control addresses the issue of the locus of the Stroop effect by examining neurophysiological components marking conflict monitoring, interference suppression, and conflict resolution. Our goal was to provide an overview of a series of determining neurophysiological findings including neural source reconstruction data on distinct executive control processes and sub-processes involved in the Stroop task. Consistently, a fronto-central N2 component is found to reflect conflict monitoring processes, with its main neural generator being the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). Then, for cognitive control tasks that involve a linguistic component like the Stroop task, the N2 is followed by a centro-posterior N400 and subsequently a late sustained potential (LSP). The N400 is mainly generated by the ACC and the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and is thought to reflect interference suppression, whereas the LSP plausibly reflects conflict resolution processes. The present overview shows that ERP constitute a reliable methodological tool for tracing with precision the time course of different executive processes and sub-processes involved in experimental tasks involving a cognitive conflict. Future research should shed light on the fine-grained mechanisms of control respectively involved in linguistic and non-linguistic tasks.

本文有关执行控制的内容是通过检查标记冲突监视，干扰抑制和冲突解决的神经生理成分来解决Stroop效应源的问题。我们的目标是概述一系列确定的神经生理学发现，包括有关Stroop任务涉及的不同执行控制过程和子过程的神经源重建数据。一致地，发现额中N2分量反映了冲突监视的过程，其主要的神经发生器是前扣带回皮质（ACC）。然后，对于涉及语言成分（例如Stroop任务）的认知控制任务，N2之后是中央后N400，然后是后期持续电位（LSP）。N400主要由ACC和前额叶皮层（PFC）生成，并被认为反映了干扰抑制，而LSP则可能反映了冲突解决流程。本概述表明，ERP构成了一种可靠的方法工具，可以精确地跟踪涉及认知冲突的实验任务中不同执行过程和子过程的时程。未来的研究应该阐明分别涉及语言和非语言任务的细粒度控制机制。