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The Journal of Neuroscience, November 28, 2007, 27(48):13303-13310; doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2349-07.2007

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Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive
Is the Prefrontal Cortex Necessary for Establishing Cognitive Sets?

James B. Rowe,^1,2,3 Katsuyuki Sakai,⁴ Torben E. Lund,^3,5 Thomas Ramsøy,³ Mark Schram Christensen,^3,6 William F. C. Baare,^3,7 Olaf B. Paulson,^3,8,9 and Richard E. Passingham^10,11

¹Department of Clinical Neurosciences, Cambridge University, Cambridge CB2 2QQ, United Kingdom, ²Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge CB2 7EF, United Kingdom, ³Danish Research Centre for Magnetic Resonance, DK-2650 Copenhagen, Denmark, ⁴Department of Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Tokyo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan, ⁵Danish National Research Foundation's Centre for Functionally Integrative Neuroscience, Aarhus University, 8000 Aarhus, Denmark, ⁶Department of Exercise and Sport Sciences, University of Copenhagen, DK-2200 Copenhagen, Denmark, ⁷Centre for Integrated Molecular Brain Imaging, DK-2100 Copenhagen, Denmark, ⁸Neurocentre, Rigshospitalet, DK-2100 Copenhagen, Denmark, ⁹Neurobiology Research Unit, DK-2100 Copenhagen, Denmark, ¹⁰Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, London WC1N 3BG, United Kingdom, and ¹¹Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 4AU, United Kingdom

Correspondence should be addressed to Dr. James B. Rowe, Medical Research Council–Cambridge University, 15 Chaucer Road, Cambridge CB2 2QQ, UK. Email: james.rowe{at}mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk

There is evidence from neuroimaging that the prefrontal cortex may be involved in establishing task set activity in advance of presentation of the task itself. To find out whether it plays an essential role, we examined patients with unilateral lesions of the rostral prefrontal cortex. They were first instructed as to whether to perform a spatial or a verbal working memory task and then given spatial and verbal items after a delay of 4–12 s. The patients showed an increase in switch costs, making more errors by repeating what they had done on the previous trial. They were able to establish regional task set activity during the instruction delay, as evidenced by sustained changes in the blood oxygenation level-dependent signal in caudal frontal regions. However, in contrast to healthy controls, they were less able to maintain functional connectivity among the surviving task-related brain regions, as evidenced by reduced correlations between them during instruction delays. The results suggest that the left rostral prefrontal cortex is indeed required for establishing a cognitive set but that the essential function is to support the functional connectivity among the task-related regions.

Key words: prefrontal cortex; fMRI; connectivity; lesion; cognitive set; switch

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Received May 23, 2007; revised Aug. 17, 2007; accepted Sept. 13, 2007.

Correspondence should be addressed to Dr. James B. Rowe, Medical Research Council–Cambridge University, 15 Chaucer Road, Cambridge CB2 2QQ, UK. Email: james.rowe{at}mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk

Related articles in J. Neurosci.:

The Role of Rostral Prefrontal Cortex in Establishing Cognitive Sets: Preparation or Coordination?

Roland G. Benoit
J. Neurosci. 2008 28: 3259-3261. [Full Text]  

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