The Role of the Medial Frontal Cortex in Cognitive Control
Abstract
Adaptive goal-directed behavior involves monitoring of ongoing actions and performance outcomes, and subsequent adjustments of behavior and learning. We evaluate new findings in cognitive neuroscience concerning cortical interactions that subserve the recruitment and implementation of such cognitive control. A review of primate and human studies, along with a meta-analysis of the human functional neuroimaging literature, suggest that the detection of unfavorable outcomes, response errors, response conflict, and decision uncertainty elicits largely overlapping clusters of activation foci in an extensive part of the posterior medial frontal cortex (pMFC). A direct link is delineated between activity in this area and subsequent adjustments in performance. Emerging evidence points to functional interactions between the pMFC and the lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC), so that monitoring-related pMFC activity serves as a signal that engages regulatory processes in the LPFC to implement performance adjustments.
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This research was supported by a TALENT grant (E.A.C.) and a VENI grant (S.N.) of the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research and by the Priority Program Executive Functions of the German Research Foundation (M.U.). Helpful comments by S. Bunge are gratefully acknowledged.
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Science
Volume 306 | Issue 5695
15 October 2004
15 October 2004
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American Association for the Advancement of Science.
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Published in print: 15 October 2004
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