The What and How of Prefrontal Cortical Organization

Overview

Journal Trends Neurosci

Specialty Neurology

Date 2010 Jun 25

PMID 20573407

Citations 114

Authors

Randall C OReilly

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

How is the prefrontal cortex (PFC) organized such that it is capable of making people more flexible and in control of their behavior? Is there any systematic organization across the many diverse areas that comprise the PFC, or is it uniquely adaptive such that no fixed representational structure can develop? Going against the current tide, this paper argues that there is indeed a systematic organization across PFC areas, with an important functional distinction between ventral and dorsal regions characterized as processing What versus How information, respectively. This distinction has implications for the rostro-caudal and medial-lateral axes of organization as well. The resulting large-scale functional map of PFC could prove useful in integrating diverse data, and in generating novel predictions.

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