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Broad domain generality in focal regions of frontal and parietal cortex
Open accessAbstract
Significance: One of the oldest debates in cognitive neuroscience concerns the degree of functional specialization present in the human brain. Prior work has discovered several highly specialized components dedicated to particular mental functions, like face recognition or motion perception. However, our cognitive versatility suggests the additional existence of more general-purpose machinery. Building on prior neuroimaging evidence, along with neurophysiological evidence from non-human primates, we searched for such domain-general brain regions in humans. Seven diverse demanding cognitive tasks produced overlapping activation at the individual-subject level in a number of frontal and parietal brain regions. Thus, human cognition arises from hardware that includes not only specialized components, but also very general-purpose ones that plausibly enable us to solve novel problems.
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“The FPN and CON are functionally separable brain networks that enable flexible adaptive control and sustained task-set maintenance [142]; together, they form the MD network [143], a set of brain regions that is active during a range of tasks that require goal-directed behavior [139].”
From The role of prefrontal cortex in cognitive control and executive function (2022) · cites this paper as [139]
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“Conjunction maps of activation during different tasks (e.g., during inhibiting, updating, and shifting tasks), either with data estimated within one study [135, 138, 139] or with meta-analytic techniques [137, 140, 141], suggest that both children and adults recruit a common set of regions within the FPN and CON during diverse EF tasks.”
From The role of prefrontal cortex in cognitive control and executive function (2022) · cites this paper as [139]
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“Our findings show that brain regions that are engaged in a verbal WM task, which are associated with the operation of the MD network (Fedorenko et al., 2013;Duncan, 2010), are also engaged during spatial and imitative conflict resolution.”
From Functional Specificity and Sex Differences in the Neural Circuits Supporting the Inhibition of Automatic Imitation (2018) · cites this paper as Fedorenko et al., 2013
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“The hard > easy contrast has been found to robustly activate regions of the MD network (Fedorenko et al., 2011(Fedorenko et al., , 2013)).”
From Functional Specificity and Sex Differences in the Neural Circuits Supporting the Inhibition of Automatic Imitation (2018) · cites this paper as Fedorenko et al., 2013
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“In addition to the connectional anatomy, it has been noted that these same domain-independent regions are activated during a variety of different cognitive and motor control tasks [70, 71].”
From Neurocomputational mechanisms underlying subjective valuation of effort costs (2017) · cites this paper as [71]
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Metadata
- Authors
- Fedorenko, E., Duncan, J., & Kanwisher, N.
- Affiliations
- McGovern Institute for Brain Research (US)
- MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit (GB)
- Venue
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Publisher
- National Academy of Sciences
- Published
- 2013-09-23
- Volume
- 110
- Issue
- 41
- Pages
- 16616-16621
- ISSN
- 0027-8424 (ISSN-L)
- 1091-6490
- PMC
- PMC3799302
- OpenAlex
- W2001896589
- Cited by
- 952
- References
- 99
- Citations by year
- 2026: 79 · 2025: 101 · 2024: 93 · 2023: 63 · 2022: 82 · 2021: 94 · 2020: 90 · 2019: 85 · 2018: 62 · 2017: 75 · 2016: 61 · 2015: 42 · 2014: 23 · 2013: 2
- FWCI
- 23.40
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, other-oa)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- DSpace@MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- Funders
- National Science Foundation (057522, 0904625)
- Ellison Medical Foundation
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- National Institutes of Health (5k99hd057522-02)
- McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Medical Research Council
- National Eye Institute (R01EY013455)
- National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
- Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (K99 HD-057522)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Cognitive Abilities and Testing
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Functional Brain Connectivity Studies
- Keywords
- domain generality, domain specificity, frontal cortex, parietal cortex, cognitive flexibility, arithmetic, working memory, cognitive inhibition, single-subject analysis, functional topography
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Brain Mapping, Cognition, Female, Frontal Lobe, Humans, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Male, Massachusetts, Middle Aged, Neuropsychological Tests, Parietal Lobe
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