Institute of Developmental Neurophysiology, Center for Molecular Neurobiology, Hamburg Center of Neuroscience, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany.
Center for Brain Research, Division of Cognitive Neurobiology, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
Neuron. 2023 Apr 5;111(7):1020-1036. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2023.03.017.
The prefrontal cortex (PFC) enables a staggering variety of complex behaviors, such as planning actions, solving problems, and adapting to new situations according to external information and internal states. These higher-order abilities, collectively defined as adaptive cognitive behavior, require cellular ensembles that coordinate the tradeoff between the stability and flexibility of neural representations. While the mechanisms underlying the function of cellular ensembles are still unclear, recent experimental and theoretical studies suggest that temporal coordination dynamically binds prefrontal neurons into functional ensembles. A so far largely separate stream of research has investigated the prefrontal efferent and afferent connectivity. These two research streams have recently converged on the hypothesis that prefrontal connectivity patterns influence ensemble formation and the function of neurons within ensembles. Here, we propose a unitary concept that, leveraging a cross-species definition of prefrontal regions, explains how prefrontal ensembles adaptively regulate and efficiently coordinate multiple processes in distinct cognitive behaviors.
前额皮质（prefrontal cortex，PFC）使各种复杂的行为成为可能，例如根据外部信息和内部状态规划行动、解决问题和适应新情况。这些被统称为适应性认知行为的高级能力，需要细胞集合来协调神经表示的稳定性和灵活性之间的权衡。尽管细胞集合功能的机制尚不清楚，但最近的实验和理论研究表明，时间协调会将前额叶神经元动态地绑定到功能集合中。到目前为止，一个在很大程度上独立的研究领域一直在研究前额叶的传出和传入连接。这两个研究领域最近都提出了一个假设，即前额叶连接模式会影响集合的形成以及集合内神经元的功能。在这里，我们提出了一个统一的概念，利用前额叶区域的跨物种定义来解释前额叶集合如何自适应地调节和有效地协调不同认知行为中的多个过程。
