Resting State Alpha Oscillations and Inhibitory Cognitive Control: Evidence from Stroop and Navon Tasks.

Previous work has indicated that individual differences in cognitive performance can be predicted by characteristics of resting state alpha oscillations, such as individual alpha frequency (IAF). Although IAF has previously been correlated with cognitive functions such as memory, attention, or mental speed, its relation to cognitive conflict processing remains unexplored. The current work investigated the relation between IAF and inhibitory cognitive control in two well-established conflict tasks: Stroop and Navon task. In a sample of 55 healthy individuals, we found that IAF measured at rest was significantly related to cognitive control in the Stroop conflict task. Moreover, IAF was predictive of practice-dependent performance changes in the Navon task. Notably, these effects were specific to IAF, but did not extend to resting state power in the alpha band or theta band. Taken together, our study reveals that the two computerized conflict tasks assess different aspects of cognitive control that can be predicted based on IAF extracted from a short resting state EEG measurement.