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- Title
Stimulus Selectivity in Dorsal and Ventral Prefrontal Cortex after Training in Working Memory Tasks.
- Authors
Meyer, Travis; Qi, Xue-Lian; Stanford, Terrence R.&; Constantinidis, Christos
- Abstract
The prefrontal cortex is known to represent different types of information in working memory. Contrasting theories propose that the corsal and ventral regions of the lateral prefrontal cortex are innately specialized for the representation of spatial and nonspatial nformation, respectively (Goldman-Rakic, 1996), or that the two regions are shaped by the demands of cognitive tasks imposed on them Miller, 2000). To resolve this issue, we recorded from neurons in the two regions, before and at multiple stages of training monkeys on isual working memory tasks. Before training, substantial functional differences were present between the two regions. Dorsal prefrontal ctex exhibited higher overall responsiveness to visual stimuli and higher selectivity for spatial information. After training, stimulus selectivity generally decreased, although dorsal prefrontal cortex retained higher spatial selectivity regardless of task performed. Ventral prefrontal cortex appeared to be affected to a greater extent by the nature of the task. Our results indicate that regional specialization for stimulus selectivity is present in the primate prefrontal cortex regardless of training. Dorsal areas of the prefrontal cortex are inherently organized to represent spatial information, and training has little influence on this spatial bias. Ventral areas are biased toward nonspatial information, although they are more influenced by training both in terms of activation and changes in stimulus selectivity.
- Subjects
CEREBRAL cortex; PREFRONTAL cortex; NEURONS; MEMORY; STIMULUS synthesis; LABORATORY monkeys
- Publication
Journal of Neuroscience, 2011, Vol 31, Issue 17, p6266
- ISSN
0270-6474
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1523/JNEUROSCI.6798-10.2011