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The prefrontal cortex is regarded by many as the executive controller, which determines appropriate coupling between a sensory input and motor output to meet environmental demands. Our cognitive ability heavily relies on the function of the prefrontal cortex. Prefrontal Cortex: From Synaptic Plasticity to Cognition takes an interdisciplinary approach to characterize the function of the anterior portion of the frontal lobe in rodents and human and non-human primates. The topics in this volume are diverse. They range from membrane properties of prefrontal neurons to cognitive psychology and attempt to encompass domains of the prefrontal field in an effort to provide the bigger picture.
The prefrontal cortex makes up almost a quarter of the human brain. The Neurobiology of the Prefrontal Cortex presents a new theory about its fundamental function. Written by two leading brain scientists, it is an important contribution to our understanding of the evolution and functioning of the human brain.
"This chapter explains why this book is organized as it is. Each neocortical area has a unique pattern of inputs and outputs. This means that the challenge is to understand the transformation that each of the prefrontal areas performs from input to output. Functional brain imaging allows us to visualize the human brain at work, but it does not have the spatial resolution to identify the mechanisms that support the transformations that the brain performs. It is neurophysiological recordings from cells that tell us how these are achieved. Chapters 3-8 are therefore mainly devoted to studies that have been carried out on the prefrontal cortex of macaque monkeys because the methods are necessarily invasive. Apart from recording, the methods include making selective lesions in an area; it is these that identify the contribution that is unique to that area. The book ends by reviewing the evolution of the human prefrontal cortex; and the final two chapters discuss the ways in which the human prefrontal cortex is specialized in terms of function. In doing so, they attempt to account for the intellectual gap between humans and other primates"--
This book is devoted to the executive, emotional, social, and integrative functions of the prefrontal cortex (PFC). The PFC has usually been studied only with its executive function or with its emotional function, but recent studies indicate that the PFC plays important roles in integrating executive and emotional functions as well as in social behavior. The first part of the book reviews the functional organization of the PFC in human and nonhuman primates. The subsequent part focuses on the integrator of executive and emotional functions. The third part presents the integrator of executive and social functions, and the final part discusses the default mode of brain activities. There are chapters on animal studies, because functional significance of the PFC cannot be described without referring to those studies. Thus many methodologies are presented such as human neuropsychological, neuroimaging, and stimulation studies, and animal neuropsychological, neurophysiological, neurochemical, neuroanatomical, and neuroimaging studies. Bringing those together, this volume provides a timely and concise picture of the function of the PFC. The result is a valuable resource for students and scientists, providing up-to-date information on this emerging research topic.
Adolescence is a time when youth make decisions, both good and bad, that have consequences for the rest of their lives. Some of these decisions put them at risk of lifelong health problems, injury, or death. The Institute of Medicine held three public workshops between 2008 and 2009 to provide a venue for researchers, health care providers, and community leaders to discuss strategies to improve adolescent health.
This is the fourth edition of the undisputed classic on the prefrontal cortex, the principal "executive" structure of the brain. Because of its role in such cognitive functions as working memory, planning, and decision-making, the prefrontal cortex is critically involved in the organization of behavior, language, and reasoning. Prefrontal dysfunction lies at the foundation of several psychotic and neurodegenerative disorders, including schizophrenia and dementia. Written by an award-winning author who discovered "memory cells"-the physiological substrate of working memory Provides an in-depth examination of the contributions of every relevant methodology, from comparative anatomy to modern imaging Well-referenced with more than 2000 references
The prefrontal cortex makes up almost a quarter of the human brain, and it expanded dramatically during primate evolution. The Neurobiology of the Prefrontal Cortex presents a new theory about its fundamental function. In this important new book, the authors argue that primate-specific parts of the prefrontal cortex evolved to reduce errors in foraging choices, so that particular ancestors of modern humans could overcome periodic food shortages. These developments laid the foundation for working out problems in our imagination, which resulted in the insights that allow humans to avoid errors entirely, at least at times. In the book, the authors detail which parts of the prefrontal cortex evolved exclusively in primates, how its connections explain why the prefrontal cortex alone can perform its function, and why other parts of the brain cannot do what the prefrontal cortex does. Based on an analysis of its evolutionary history, the book uses evidence from lesion, imaging, and cell-recording experiments to argue that the primate prefrontal cortex generates goals from a current behavioural context and that it can do so on the basis of single events. As a result, the prefrontal cortex uses the attentive control of behaviour to augment an older general-purpose learning system, one that evolved very early in the history of animals. This older system learns slowly and cumulatively over many experiences based on reinforcement. The authors argue that a new learning system evolved in primates at a particular time and place in their history, that it did so to decrease the errors inherent in the older learning system, and that severe volatility of food resources provided the driving force for these developments. Written by two leading brain scientists, The Neurobiology of the Prefrontal Cortex is an important contribution to our understanding of the evolution and functioning of the human brain.
Experts review the latest research on the neocortex and consider potential directions for future research. Over the past decade, technological advances have dramatically increased information on the structural and functional organization of the brain, especially the cerebral cortex. This explosion of data has radically expanded our ability to characterize neural circuits and intervene at increasingly higher resolutions, but it is unclear how this has informed our understanding of underlying mechanisms and processes. In search of a conceptual framework to guide future research, leading researchers address in this volume the evolution and ontogenetic development of cortical structures, the cortical connectome, and functional properties of neuronal circuits and populations. They explore what constitutes “uniquely human” mental capacities and whether neural solutions and computations can be shared across species or repurposed for potentially uniquely human capacities. Contributors Danielle S. Bassett, Randy M. Bruno, Elizabeth A. Buffalo, Michael E. Coulter, Hermann Cuntz, Stanislas Dehaene, James J. DiCarlo, Pascal Fries, Karl J. Friston, Asif A. Ghazanfar, Anne-Lise Giraud, Joshua I. Gold, Scott T. Grafton, Jennifer M. Groh, Elizabeth A. Grove, Saskia Haegens, Kenneth D. Harris, Kristen M. Harris, Nicholas G. Hatsopoulos, Tarik F. Haydar, Takao K. Hensch, Wieland B. Huttner, Matthias Kaschube, Gilles Laurent, David A. Leopold, Johannes Leugering, Belen Lorente-Galdos, Jason N. MacLean, David A. McCormick, Lucia Melloni, Anish Mitra, Zoltán Molnár, Sydney K. Muchnik, Pascal Nieters, Marcel Oberlaender, Bijan Pesaran, Christopher I. Petkov, Gordon Pipa, David Poeppel, Marcus E. Raichle, Pasko Rakic, John H. Reynolds, Ryan V. Raut, John L. Rubenstein, Andrew B. Schwartz, Terrence J. Sejnowski, Nenad Sestan, Debra L. Silver, Wolf Singer, Peter L. Strick, Michael P. Stryker, Mriganka Sur, Mary Elizabeth Sutherland, Maria Antonietta Tosches, William A. Tyler, Martin Vinck, Christopher A. Walsh, Perry Zurn
Thanks to a resurgence of interest and a recent proliferation of research techniques, much new and illuminating data has emerged during the last decade relating to the prefrontal cortex, particularly in primates and rodents. In view of this progress, the 16th International Summer School of Brain Research was held in Amsterdam, The Netherlands from 28 August to 1 September 1989, devoted to the topic of `The Prefrontal Cortex: Its Structure, Function and Pathology'. The edited proceedings, embodied in this 85th volume of `Progress in Brain Research', fall into three sections - the first of which, following two introductory chapters, discusses the present knowledge of the organization of prefrontal cortical systems. In the second section, developmental and plasticity aspects in rodent and human cortex are considered, whilst the third section deals extensively with the functional aspects characteristic for the prefrontal cortex in primates, rats and rabbits. The last section reviews several topics on dysfunction of prefrontal cortex in rat and man, including a historical review on psychosurgery.