Courtney Susan M
Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA.
Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci. 2004 Dec;4(4):501-16. doi: 10.3758/cabn.4.4.501.
A hallmark of primate, and particularly human, behavior is cognitive control, the ability to integrate information from a multitude of sources and use that information to flexibly guide behavior in order to achieve an infinite number of goals. The neural mechanisms of cognitive control have yet to be fully elucidated, although the prefrontal cortex is known to play a critical role. Here, I review evidence suggesting that a unifying principle regarding the role of various portions of the prefrontal cortex in a wide range of cognitive tasks is the active maintenance in working memory of different types of currently relevant information-from specific stimulus features, to instructional cues, to motivational goals and contexts. I argue that the key to demonstrating the existence of this domain-dependent organization lies in a better understanding of the nature of the representation of this information and the ways in which this information itself controls cognition and behavior.
灵长类动物，尤其是人类行为的一个标志是认知控制，即整合来自多种来源的信息并利用这些信息灵活地指导行为以实现无数目标的能力。认知控制的神经机制尚未完全阐明，尽管已知前额叶皮质起着关键作用。在此，我回顾相关证据，这些证据表明，关于前额叶皮质各部分在广泛认知任务中的作用，一个统一的原则是在工作记忆中主动维持不同类型的当前相关信息——从特定刺激特征到指令线索，再到动机目标和情境。我认为，证明这种领域依赖性组织存在的关键在于更好地理解这些信息表征的本质以及这些信息本身控制认知和行为的方式。
