Generalizing the control architecture of the lateral prefrontal cortex

Abstract

Cognitive control guides non-habitual, goal directed behaviors allowing us to flexibly adapt to ongoing demands. Previous work has suggested that multiple cognitive control processes exist that can be classed according to their action on present-oriented/external information versus future-oriented/internal information. These processes can be mapped onto the lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC) such that increasingly rostral areas are involved in increasingly future-oriented/internal control processes. Whether and how such processes are organized to support goal-directed behavior remains unclear. On the one hand, the LPFC may flexibly adapt based upon demands. On the other hand, there may be a consistent control architecture such as a control hierarchy that generalizes across demands. Previous work using fMRI in humans during a comprehensive control task that engaged several control processes at once found that an area in mid-LPFC consistently exerted widespread influence throughout the LPFC. These data suggested that the mid-LPFC forms an apex of a putative control hierarchy. However, whether such an architecture generalizes across tasks remains to be tested. Here, we utilized a modified comprehensive control task designed to alter how control processes influence one another to test the generalizability of the LPFC control architecture. Univariate fMRI activations revealed distinct control-related activations relative to past work. Despite these changes, effective connectivity modeling revealed a directed architecture similar to previous findings with the mid-LPFC exerting the most widespread influences throughout LPFC. These results suggest that the fundamental control architecture of the LPFC is relatively fixed, and that different demands are accommodated through modulations of this fixed architecture.