Hartogsveld Bart, Bramson Bob, Vijayakumar Suhas, van Campen A Dilene, Marques José P, Roelofs Karin, Toni Ivan, Bekkering Harold, Mars Rogier B
Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Nijmegen, 6525 EZ Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Nijmegen, 6525 EZ Nijmegen, The Netherlands; Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging, Centre for Functional MRI of the Brain (FMRIB), Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, John Radcliffe Hospital, University of Oxford, Oxford OX3 9DU, United Kingdom.
Behav Brain Res. 2018 Dec 14;355:2-11. doi: 10.1016/j.bbr.2017.08.003. Epub 2017 Aug 12.
The functional contribution of the lateral frontal cortex to behavior has been discussed with reference to several higher-order cognitive domains. In a separate line of research, recent studies have focused on the anatomical organization of this part of the brain. These different approaches are rarely combined. Here, we combine previous work using anatomical connectivity that identified a lateral subdivision of the human frontal pole and work that suggested a general role for rostrolateral prefrontal cortex in processing higher-order relations, irrespective of the type of information. We asked healthy human volunteers to judge the relationship between pairs of stimuli, a task previously suggested to engage the lateral frontal pole. Presenting both shape and face stimuli, we indeed observed overlapping activation of the lateral prefrontal cortex when subjects judged relations between pairs. Using resting state functional MRI, we confirmed that the activated region's whole-brain connectivity most strongly resembles that of the lateral frontal pole. Using diffusion MRI, we showed that the pattern of connections of this region with the main association fibers again is most similar to that of the lateral frontal pole, consistent with the observation that it is this anatomical region that is involved in relational processing.
外侧额叶皮质对行为的功能贡献已在多个高阶认知领域的背景下进行了讨论。在另一项独立的研究中，近期的研究聚焦于大脑这一部分的解剖结构。这些不同的研究方法很少结合起来。在此，我们将先前利用解剖连接性的研究工作（该研究确定了人类额极的一个外侧分区）与另一项研究工作相结合，后者表明，无论信息类型如何，前额叶皮质腹外侧在处理高阶关系中具有普遍作用。我们让健康的人类志愿者判断刺激对之间的关系，这是一项先前研究表明会涉及外侧额极的任务。当呈现形状和面部刺激时，我们确实观察到，当受试者判断刺激对之间的关系时，外侧前额叶皮质会出现重叠激活。利用静息态功能磁共振成像，我们证实激活区域的全脑连接性与外侧额极的全脑连接性最为相似。利用扩散磁共振成像，我们表明该区域与主要联合纤维的连接模式同样与外侧额极最为相似，这与如下观察结果一致：正是这个解剖区域参与了关系处理。
