Common Regions of the Human Frontal Lobe Recruited by Diverse Cognitive Demands

Common Regions of the Human Frontal Lobe Recruited by

Diverse Cognitive DemandsJohn Duncan and Adrian M. Owen

Frontal Lobe

• Connectivity– Modules?

• Frontal functions

• Network of prefrontal regions involved in diverse cognitive tasks

Cognitive Demands

• Response conflict

• Novelty

• Working memory: number of elements

• Working memory: delay

• Perceptual difficulty

Isolation of a Cental Bottleneck of Information Processing with

Time-Resolved fMRIPaul E. Dux, Jason Ivanoff,

Christopher L. Asplund, and René Marois

Central Bottleneck

• Central, amodal processing stage

• Psychological refractory period

• Time-resolved fMRI

pLPFC

• Coactivation by contrasting tasks

• Serial postponement of activity

Implications

• SMFC as well as pLPFC

• Correspond to mid-dorsolateral and anterior cingulate– Recall Duncan & Owen (2000)

• Diverse cognitive functions, but limitations

An Integrative Theory of Prefrontal Cortex Function

Earl K. Miller and Jonathan D. Cohen

PFC

• Top-down control– Access to range of information – Multimodal– Maintain and update representations – Exert biasing signals to other regions– Plasticity