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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"--
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
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.
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.
The prefrontal cortex reaches its greatest development in the human brain, making up nearly one third of the neocortex. Due to its remarkable evolution, the prefrontal cortex plays an important role in higher integrative functions such as information processing, thinking, understanding, attention, behavior, motivation, emotions, working memory, and analysis. This book brings together theoretical and technical research advances on the prefrontal cortex, from the basic explanations of the neuronal architecture of the prefrontal cortex and its anatomy, presenting it as a morphological substrate for many psychological conditions, through normal and altered connectivity and its manifestation in different behavior and identification of organizational levels inside the prefrontal cortex through different neuroimaging methods. It also provides an interdisciplinary view of the prefrontal cortex and its issues and discovers the main role of this part of brain in psychosocial, economic, and cultural adaptation.
The first comprehensive treatment of active inference, an integrative perspective on brain, cognition, and behavior used across multiple disciplines. Active inference is a way of understanding sentient behavior—a theory that characterizes perception, planning, and action in terms of probabilistic inference. Developed by theoretical neuroscientist Karl Friston over years of groundbreaking research, active inference provides an integrated perspective on brain, cognition, and behavior that is increasingly used across multiple disciplines including neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy. Active inference puts the action into perception. This book offers the first comprehensive treatment of active inference, covering theory, applications, and cognitive domains. Active inference is a “first principles” approach to understanding behavior and the brain, framed in terms of a single imperative to minimize free energy. The book emphasizes the implications of the free energy principle for understanding how the brain works. It first introduces active inference both conceptually and formally, contextualizing it within current theories of cognition. It then provides specific examples of computational models that use active inference to explain such cognitive phenomena as perception, attention, memory, and planning.