Authors:

DUNCAN, J.

Reference:

Year of publication:

2001

CBU number:

5097

Abstract:

Prefrontal cortex plays a vital part in effective, organized behaviour. Both functional neuroimaging and awake monkey electrophysiology suggest that a fundamental principle of prefrontal function may be adaptive neural coding - in large regions of prefrontal cortex, neurons adapt their properties to carry just that information of relevance to current concerns, producing a dense, distributed representation of related inputs, actions, rewards and other information. A model based on such adaptive coding integrates the role of prefrontal cortex in working memory, attention and control. Adaptive coding suggests new perspectives on a number of basic questions, including mapping of cognitive to neurophysiological functions, the roles of task content and difficulty, and the nature of frontal lobe specializations.