Badre David, Hoffman Joshua, Cooney Jeffrey W, D'Esposito Mark
Department of Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, USA.
Nat Neurosci. 2009 Apr;12(4):515-22. doi: 10.1038/nn.2277. Epub 2009 Mar 1.
Cognitive control permits us to make decisions about abstract actions, such as whether to e-mail versus call a friend, and to select the concrete motor programs required to produce those actions, based on our goals and knowledge. The frontal lobes are necessary for cognitive control at all levels of abstraction. Recent neuroimaging data have motivated the hypothesis that the frontal lobes are organized hierarchically, such that control is supported in progressively caudal regions as decisions are made at more concrete levels of action. We found that frontal damage impaired action decisions at a level of abstraction that was dependent on lesion location (rostral lesions affected more abstract tasks, whereas caudal lesions affected more concrete tasks), in addition to impairing tasks requiring more, but not less, abstract action control. Moreover, two adjacent regions were distinguished on the basis of the level of control, consistent with previous functional magnetic resonance imaging results. These results provide direct evidence for a rostro-caudal hierarchical organization of the frontal lobes.
认知控制使我们能够对抽象行为做出决策，比如决定是给朋友发电子邮件还是打电话，并根据我们的目标和知识选择执行这些行为所需的具体运动程序。额叶对于各级抽象水平的认知控制都是必需的。最近的神经影像学数据支持了这样一种假说，即额叶是分层组织的，随着在更具体的行动水平上做出决策，控制在逐渐靠后的区域得到支持。我们发现，额叶损伤会损害取决于病变位置的抽象水平上的行动决策（额叶前部病变影响更抽象的任务，而额叶后部病变影响更具体的任务），此外还会损害需要更多而非更少抽象行动控制的任务。而且，根据控制水平区分出了两个相邻区域，这与之前的功能磁共振成像结果一致。这些结果为额叶的前后分层组织提供了直接证据。
