The Stroop effect: An activation likelihood estimation meta-analysis in healthy young adults

Age plays a significant role in executive control processes in the Stroop task. This study aims to draw together the Stroop tasks to determine the role of the frontal cortex in cognitive control among healthy young adults using activation likelihood estimation. Forty-six studies were selected according to the fMRI neuroimaging tools, Stroop experimental tasks, young participants' age. The results showed that the contrast of incongruent conditions and congruent conditions revealed 7 significant clusters, including the right cingulate cortex, left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, bilateral inferior frontal gyrus, right superior frontal gyrus and temporal cortex. In addition, the contrast comparing incongruent conditions with neutral conditions activated a network including the right inferior frontal gyrus, left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, bilateral medial frontal cortex, left insular cortex and bilateral inferior parietal lobule and precuneus. In this study, we found that the brain areas for executive performance had a higher concordance in the frontal cortex among healthy young adults than temporal-parietal network.