Specialisation within the prefrontal cortex: the ventral prefrontal cortex and associative learning
Abstract
This paper provides evidence that the ventral prefrontal cortex plays a role in the learning of tasks in which subjects must learn to associate visual cues and responses. Imaging with both positron-emission tomography (PET) and functional magnetic-resonance imaging (fMRI) reveals learning-related increases in activity when normal subjects learn visual associative tasks. Evidence is also presented from an event-related fMRI study that activity in this area is time-locked both to the presentation of the visual stimuli and also to the time of the motor response. Finally, it is shown in a study of monkeys that removal of the ventral prefrontal area 12 (including 45 A) impairs the ability of monkeys to relearn a visual associative task (visual matching), even though there were no demands on working memory. It is, therefore, proposed that the ventral prefrontal cortex constitutes part of the circuitry via which associations are formed between visual cues and the actions or choices that they specify. On the basis of the existing anatomical and electrophysiological data, it is argued that the prefrontal cortex is the only area that can represent cues, responses and outcomes.
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Increased activity of bilateral ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (PMv/IFG) in the dual-task condition before training suggests that dual-task conditions may require greater control over stimulus-response mapping rules, even when the mappings are spatially compatible.
“The increased activity of bilateral ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (PMv/IFG) in our dual-task condition before training suggests that dual-task conditions may require greater control over stimulus-response mapping rules, even in cases in which the mappings are spatially compatible.”
From The Neural Correlates of Motor Skill Automaticity (2005) · cites this paper as Passingham et al., 2000
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“In this context, it is interesting that previous studies have associated ventrolateral prefrontal cortex with the learning, maintenance, and controlled retrieval of stimulus– response associations (Asaad et al., 1998; Passingham et al., 2000; Bunge et al., 2003).”
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- Authors
- Passingham, R. E., Toni, I., & Rushworth, M. F. S.
- Affiliations
- University of Oxford (GB)
- UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology (GB)
- Venue
- Experimental Brain Research
- Published
- 2000-05-10
- Volume
- 133
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 103-113
- ISSN
- 0014-4819 (ISSN-L)
- 1432-1106
- OpenAlex
- W1995787801
- Cited by
- 268
- References
- 3
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 5 · 2024: 2 · 2023: 2 · 2022: 3 · 2021: 5 · 2020: 1 · 2019: 1 · 2018: 1 · 2017: 7 · 2016: 6 · 2015: 14 · 2014: 9 · 2013: 10 · 2012: 13
- FWCI
- 10.74
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Licence
- www.springer.com/tdm (tdm)
- Locations
- Experimental Brain Research (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- Wellcome Trust
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Memory and Neural Mechanisms
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience › Neurotransmitter Receptor Influence on Behavior
- Keywords
- ventral prefrontal cortex, associative learning, visual matching, working memory
- MeSH terms
- Animals, Association Learning, Humans, Macaca, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Tomography, Emission-Computed, Prefrontal Cortex
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