Watanabe Masataka
Department of Psychology, Tokyo Metropolitan Institute for Neuroscience, Musashidai 2-6, Fuchu, Tokyo 183-8526, Japan.
Curr Opin Neurobiol. 2007 Apr;17(2):213-9. doi: 10.1016/j.conb.2007.02.007. Epub 2007 Mar 2.
The lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC), which is important for higher cognitive activity, is also concerned with motivational operations; this is exemplified by its activity in relation to expectancy of rewards. In the LPFC, motivational information is integrated with cognitive information, as demonstrated by the enhancement of working-memory-related activity by reward expectancy. Such activity would be expected to induce changes in attention and, subsequently, to modify behavioral performance. Recently, the effects of motivation and emotion on neural activities have been examined in several areas of the brain in relation to cognitive-task performance. Of these areas, the LPFC seems to have the most important role in adaptive goal-directed behavior, by sending top-down attention-control signals to other areas of the brain.
外侧前额叶皮质（LPFC）对更高层次的认知活动很重要，也与动机运作有关；这一点在其与奖励预期相关的活动中得到了体现。在LPFC中，动机信息与认知信息整合在一起，奖励预期增强与工作记忆相关的活动就证明了这一点。这种活动预计会引起注意力的变化，进而改变行为表现。最近，已经在大脑的几个区域研究了动机和情绪对与认知任务表现相关的神经活动的影响。在这些区域中，LPFC似乎在适应性目标导向行为中发挥着最重要的作用，它通过向大脑的其他区域发送自上而下的注意力控制信号来实现这一点。
