Executive and Motivational Control of Behavior and the Primate Prefrontal Cortex

Abstract

Event Abstract Back to Event Executive and Motivational Control of Behavior and the Primate Prefrontal Cortex Masataka Watanabe1* 1 Tokyo Metropolitan Institute for Neuroscience Musashida, Japan The prefrontal cortex (PFC) is essential for higher cognitive activity, such as reasoning, problem solving, planning and behavioral inhibition. Humans and animals work to attain several goals for promoting their better survival. The higher cognitive function of the PFC appears to be important for this process. In order to achieve a goal, organisms must appropriately comprehend the environmental situation. To do so, it is more important to code the meaning that the currently presented stimulus has to the organism than simply to code its physical characteristics such as its length, magnitude and frequency. Indeed, there are primate PFC neurons that are concerned with coding the meaning (behavioral significance) of the stimulus in relation to what behavioral response it indicates to the organism in the current task situation. In order to code the meaning of the stimulus, it is essential to continuously monitor the cognitive context that consists of the task situation and/or previous stimulus-response sequences. Thus, there are primate PFC neurons that are involved in monitoring the cognitive context by showing context-related sustained baseline activity. Importantly, PFC is concerned with not only cognitive but also motivational context. The motivational context consists of the organism’s present motivational state and information regarding the attractiveness/aversiveness of the past, present, or future reward/threat. There are primate PFC neurons that are concerned with coding the motivation significance of the stimulus in relation to what appetitive or aversive event the stimulus is associated with. Some PFC neurons represent, not what is actually presented, but instead what is missing in the current motivational context. There are also PFC neurons that are involved in monitoring the motivational context by showing context-related sustained baseline activity. For the organism to better survive, it is crucial to behave not in a stimulus-triggered habitual or automatic way, but in a manner that is dependent on both the cognitive and motivational context, especially when cost (cognitive) and benefit (motivational) require compromise. While all areas of the PFC are concerned with context processing, the orbitofrontal cortex is primarily concerned with processing motivational context information, especially in relation to future reward/threat, and the medial PFC including the anterior cingulate area appears to be involved in processing more cognitive than motivational context information in relation to outcome-based action selection. The lateral PFC is concerned with both motivational and cognitive context information, and more importantly appears to be concerned with the integration of motivational and cognitive context information for adaptive goal-directed behavior.