Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, 98915, USA.
Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci. 2012 Dec;12(4):611-28. doi: 10.3758/s13415-012-0117-7.
When we behave according to rules and instructions, our brains interpret abstract representations of what to do and transform them into actual behavior. In order to investigate the neural mechanisms behind this process, we devised an fMRI experiment that explicitly isolated rule interpretation from rule encoding and execution. Our results showed that a specific network of regions (including the left rostral prefrontal cortex, the caudate nucleus, and the bilateral posterior parietal cortices) is responsible for translating rules into executable form. An analysis of activation patterns across conditions revealed that the posterior parietal cortices represent a mental template for the task to perform, that the inferior parietal gyrus and the caudate nucleus are responsible for instantiating the template in the proper context, and that the left rostral prefrontal cortex integrates information across complex relationships.
当我们按照规则和指示行事时，大脑会对要做什么进行抽象表示，并将其转化为实际行为。为了研究这一过程背后的神经机制，我们设计了一项 fMRI 实验，该实验明确将规则解释与规则编码和执行分开。我们的结果表明，一个特定的区域网络（包括左侧额前皮质、尾状核和双侧顶后皮质）负责将规则转化为可执行的形式。对条件下的激活模式进行分析表明，顶后皮质代表了执行任务的心理模板，下顶叶回和尾状核负责在适当的上下文中实例化模板，而左侧额前皮质则整合了复杂关系中的信息。
