Multiple partially overlapping neural modules orchestrate conflict processing

Cognitive conflict is a ubiquitous aspect of our daily life, yet its underlying neural mechanisms remain debated. Competing theories propose that conflict processing is governed by either a domain-general system, multiple conflict-specific modules, or an architecture involving partially overlapping mechanisms. The aim of the current study was to clarify how these mechanisms operate at the neural level using a data-driven decoding approach. We analyzed electroencephalogram (EEG) data from 507 healthy participants (ages 20–70) from the Dortmund Vital Study (ClinicalTrials.gov NCT05155397) who completed three conflict tasks: a Change Detection task, a Simon task, and a Stroop task. Using multivariate decoding to distinguish conflict from non-conflict trials, we observed robust within-task decoding across all tasks. However, cross-task decoding revealed shared conflict representations only in specific task pairs. These findings support an account in which conflict processing relies on partially overlapping neural mechanisms rather than being fully domain-general or entirely task specific. We argue that conflict-related neural processes might be best conceptualized as a continuum of overlap and differentiation, with domain-generality and domain-specificity representing the endpoints of this spectrum.