Update articleFunctional specialization within the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex: A review of anatomical and physiological studies of non-human primates
Introduction
A large body of evidence indicates that the prefrontal cortex plays a central role in the cognitive control of behavior (e.g., Goldman-Rakic, 1987, Goldman-Rakic, 1996, Passingham, 1993, Wise et al., 1996, Fuster, 1997, Miller, 2000, Miller and Cohen, 2001, Tanji and Hoshi, 2001, Funahashi, 2001). The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) lies in the middle frontal gyrus of humans (i.e., lateral part of Brodmann's area 9/46, Brodmann, 1909) and in and around the principal sulcus of macaque monkeys (i.e., in Walker's area 46, Walker, 1940). Lesion and physiological studies show that the DLPFC has a crucial role in visuospatial control of actions (e.g., Mishkin, 1957, Kubota and Niki, 1971, Fuster and Alexander, 1971, Passingham, 1975, Funahashi et al., 1993a, Curtis and D’Esposito, 2004), as indicated by its cortico-cortical connections with the parietal and premotor cortices (Barbas and Pandya, 1987, Bates and Goldman-Rakic, 1993, Lu et al., 1994, Petrides and Pandya, 1999, Petrides and Pandya, 2002, Takada et al., 2004, Miyachi et al., 2005).
However, detailed anatomical studies show that subparts of the DLPFC receive their main input from distinct subparts of the parietal cortex (Petrides and Pandya, 1984), where each subpart represents spatial information with distinct reference frames (Mountcastle et al., 1975, Andersen et al., 1997, Colby and Goldberg, 1999, Andersen and Buneo, 2002). This raises the intriguing possibility that some functional specialization exists within the DLPFC. Here, I review anatomical and physiological evidence suggesting that this is the case and discuss its functional significance.
Section snippets
Dorsal and ventral subparts within the DLPFC and their anatomical connections
In this review, I focus on the anatomical connections of the DLPFC of the macaque monkey because this species has been most precisely studied, both anatomically and physiologically. Barbas and Pandya (1989) identified two trends in architectonic organization in the prefrontal cortex. The first originates from the periallocortex around the rostral portion of the corpus callosum and ends in the dorsal part of the DLPFC and area 8. The second originates from the periallocortex in the caudal
Integrative functions of the DLPFC
In the following two sections, I will focus on physiological studies aimed at revealing the response properties of neurons in the DLPFC. The studies most relevant to this review are summarized in Table 1. Neurons in the DLPFC have been shown to reflect spatial aspects of visual signals and motor acts (Niki and Watanabe, 1976b, Kojima and Goldman-Rakic, 1982, Funahashi et al., 1989, Funahashi et al., 1993b, Quintana and Fuster, 1992, Hasegawa et al., 1998, Chafee and Goldman-Rakic, 1998,
Distinct roles of the DLPFCd and DLPFCv in visuomotor transformation
Many physiological studies have examined the neuronal mechanisms underlying visuomotor transformation in the prefrontal cortex. An important factor characterizing the lateral prefrontal cortex is its ability to collect and represent wide varieties of information. Large numbers of neurons reflect either only object information or only spatial information, and both types are located in the prefrontal cortex (Wilson et al., 1993, Rao et al., 1997, O Scalaidhe et al., 1997, Rainer et al., 1998a,
Summary
In this review, I collected two lines of evidence for functional segregation within the DLPFC, which was originally viewed as an area specialized for spatial information processing, and I argued that at least two distinct subregions can be identified: the dorsal part (DLPFCd) and the ventral part (DLPFCv).
First, I reviewed data obtained from anatomical studies, which clearly indicate that the DLPFCd and DLPFCv can be viewed as two distinct areas based on the following five anatomical grounds:
Acknowledgments
I thank my mentors, Drs. J. Féger, K. Kurata, P.L. Strick, J. Tanji, and L. Tremblay for their excellent advice and Dr. Petrides for allowing me to reproduce his original figures. I was supported by a postdoctoral fellowship from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, a long-term fellowship from the Human Frontier Science Program Organization, and a Center of Excellence (COE) grant from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology of Japan. Finally, I thank Drs.
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