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Brain and Cognition

Seminar Brain and Cognition:The Prefrontal Cortex and Higher Cognitive Functions
Instructors Janina Kirsch, Ad Aertsen, Clemens Boucsein, Ulrich Egert
Location Lecture Hall at the BCF, Hansastr. 9a
Time July 23 - 24, 2010, 9:00h-16:00h
Preparatoy Meeting Tuesday, April 27, 2010, 16:00h, Lecture Hall BCF, Hansastr. 9a
Number of Participants max. 10 (Online Registration) 

 

The Prefrontal Cortex (PFC) is a brain structure commonly associated with executive functions such as planning and goal-directed behavior (Miller, 2000; Fuster, 2008). It was often proposed that human cognitive superiority owes to the prefrontal cortex and that evolutionary distance to humans predicts the relative size of PFC along with the cognitive performance in species (Broca, 1861). In fact, the human PDC is among the largest and occupies about 30% of the cortical surface (Barbas, 2009). This is exceeded only by the PFC of the spiny anteater that occupies roughly 50% or the cortex (Divac et al., 1987).

The PFC is situated in the anterior part of the cerebral cortex and is a zone of multimodal convergence. It receives afferents from all sensory association areas,from hippocampus, amygdala, hypothalamus, pons and tegmentum (Petrides and Pandya, 2002, Fuster, 2008). In addition, it receives afferent from several thalamic nuclei, most notably the projection from mediodorsal nucleus which was often used as a defining property of PFC (Preuss, 1995, Barbas, 2009). Last but not least, the PFC receives rich dopaminergic innervations from ventral tegmental area (VTA) and substantia nigra (SN) and noradrenergic and serotonergic innervations from lucus ceruleus and dorsal raphe nuclei respectively (Arnsten and Robbins, 2002, Gaspar et al. 1992).

The PFC is heavily reciprocally connected and projects back to most of the structures noted above (Petrides and Pandya, 2002; Pandya and Yeterian, 1990). In addition, the PFC sends efferents to the striatum and all secondary motoric structures like frontal eye field and premotor cortex (Fuster, 2008, 1993). Based on this uniue position in sensory processing, the PFC is often described as the “...top of the perception-action cycle.” (Fuster, 2000). In fact, its pattern of connectivity places the PFC in an ideal position to broadly influence cognitive processing and to exert ‘top-down-control’ (Miller and D’Esposito, 2005).

Literature

1) Working Memory
· Miller, EK, Erickson, CA, Desimone R (1996) Neural mechanisms of visual working memory in prefrontal cortex of the macaque. J Neurosci 16(16): 5154-1567
· Fuster, JM, Alexander, GE (1971) Neuron Activity Related to Short-Term Memory. Science 173(997): 652-654
· Fuster JM (1973) Unit activity in prefrontal cortex during delayed-response performance: neuronal correlates of transient memory. J Neurophysiol 36(1): 61-78
· Kubota, K, Niki, H (1971) Prefrontal cortical unit activity and delayed alternation performance in monkeys. J Neurophysiol 34(3): 337-347

2) Attention
· Lebedev, MA, Messinger, A, Kralik, JD, Wise, SP (2004) Representation of Attended Versus Remembered Locations in Prefrontal Cortex. PLoS Biol, 2(11): e365
· Rainer, G, Rao, SC, Miller, EK (1999) Prospective coding for objects in primate prefrontal cortex. J Neurosci 19(13): 5493-5505

3) Representations of reward and value
· Watanabe, M (1996) Reward expectancy in primate prefrontal neurons. Nature 382: 629-632
· Tremblay, L, Schultz, W (2000) Reward-related neuronal activity during go-nogo task performance in primate orbitofrontal cortex. J Neurophysiol 83(4): 1864-1876
· Tremblay, L, Schultz, W (1999) Relative reward preference in primate orbitofrontal cortex. Nature, 398(6729): 704-708

4) Motivation
· Roesch, MR, Olson, CR (2003) Impact of expected reward on neuronal activity in prefrontal cortex, frontal and supplementary eye fields and premotor cortex. J Neurophysiol 90(3): 1766-1789
· Watanabe, M, Hikosaka, K, Sakagami, M, Shirakawa, S (2002) Coding and monitoring of motivational context in the primate prefrontal cortex. J Neurosci 22(6): 2391-2400

5) Multimodal integration
· Watanabe M (1992) Frontal units of the monkey coding the associative significance of visual and auditory stimuli. Exp Brain Res 89(2): 233-247
· Fuster, JM, Bodner, M, Kroger, JK (2000) Cross-modal and cross-temporal association in neurons of frontal cortex. Nature 405: 347-351

6) Categorization
· Freedman, DJ, Riesenhuber, M, Poggio, T, Miller, EK (2003) A comparison of primate prefrontal and inferior temporal cortices during visual categorization. J Neurosci 23(12): 5235-5246
· Shima, K, Isoda, M, Mushiake, H, Tanji, J (2007) Categorization of behavioral sequences in the prefrontal cortex. Nature 445(7125): 315-318

7) Representation of rules
· Hoshi, E, Shima, K, Tanji, J (1998) Task-dependent selectivity of movement-related neuronal activity in the primate prefrontal cortex. J Neurophysiol 80(6): 3392-3397
· Wallis, JD, Miller, EK (2003) From rule to response: neuronal processes in the premotor and prefrontal cortex. J Neurophysiol 90: 1790-1806

8) Representation of numerosity
· Sawamura, H, Shima, K, Tanji, J (2002) Numerical representation for action in the parietal cortex of the monkey. Nature 415: 918/922 (2002) + Supplemental Material
· Nieder, A, Freedman, DJ, Miller, EK (2002) Representation of the quantity of visual items in the primate prefrontal cortex. Science 297: 1708-1711
· Nieder, A, Miller, EK (2004) A parieto-frontal network for visual numerical information in the monkey. PNAS 101(19): 7457-7462

9) Decision Making
· Kim, J-N, Shadlen, MN (1999) Neural correlates of a decision in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex of the macaque. Nature Neuroscience 2(2): 176-185.
· Yang, T, Shadlen, MN (2007) Probabilistic reasoning by neurons. Nature 447(7148): 1075-1080.
· Peseran, B, Nelson, MJ, Andersen, RA (2008) Free choice activates a decision circuit between frontal and parietal cortex. Nature: 453(7193): 406-409.

 

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