Chapter 4 - Role of the primate lateral prefrontal cortex in integrating decision-making and motivational information

Abstract

This chapter describes neuronal bases of motivational operations in primate lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC) and discusses the interaction between cognition and motivation, focusing on neuronal mechanisms of the interaction between decision-making and reward. Primate lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC) neurons show reward (and/or absence of reward) expectancy-related as well as reward-dependent tonic baseline activity. The lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC) plays important roles in both cognition and motivation. The LPFC appears to receive reward information regarding the reward prediction error, stimulus value, and action value, from the midbrain, limbic, and striatum as well as orbital and medial prefrontal areas; it also appears to play important roles in integrating reward information with task-related cognitive information for adaptive goal-directed behavior. When a monkey expects a more preferred reward, cognitive-control–related LPFC neuronal activity is enhanced, and the animal is led to correctly and efficiently perform the task. Monkey LPFC neurons are also concerned with integrating information regarding the previous response with its outcome (reward or no reward), and this integration is considered to lead the monkey to make decisions that would be advantageous in obtaining future rewards, and to learn the stimulus–response contingencies more efficiently.