Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Prefrontal cortex and cognitive control: motivating functional hierarchies

Nature Neuroscience volume 12, pages 821–822 (2009)Cite this article

How different frontal brain regions contribute to goal-directed behavior is not fully understood. A study now suggests a parallel functional architecture in medial and lateral prefrontal cortex for motivating and selecting behavior.

“When you get hungry enough, you find yourself speaking Spanish pretty well.” This quote, attributed to African-American baseball legend Josh Gibson when temporarily plying his trade in 1930s Cuba, vividly captures the notion that motivation is important for cognition. When faced with the prospect of a cognitively demanding task, we ask ourselves not only whether we are able to perform it, but also whether it is worth the effort. In an elegant new study, Kouneiher et al.1 employed functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to assess how regions of the human lateral and medial prefrontal cortex (PFC) mediate the relationship between cognitive demands and motivational considerations. Their results suggest that motivational incentives engage areas in medial PFC that in turn energize regions of the lateral PFC, which are involved in selecting task-appropriate behavior. Furthermore, both medial and lateral areas appear to obey an anterior-to-posterior (rostro-caudal) functional organization, according to whether representations of cognitive and motivational task parameters stem from temporally distal or proximate cues.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Relevant articles

Open Access articles citing this article.

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Get just this article for as long as you need it

$39.95

Learn more

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Figure 1: The functional architecture of medial and lateral PFC regions suggested by Kouneiher et al.1

References

  1. Kouneiher, F., Charron, S. & Koechlin, E. Nat. Neurosci. 12, 939–945 (2009).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  2. Goldman-Rakic, P.S. in Handbook of Physiology, Section 1: The Nervous System, vol. 5 (eds. Plum, F. & Mountcastle, V.B.) 373–417 (American Physiological Society, Bethesda, Maryland, 1987).

    Google Scholar 

  3. Petrides, M. in Handbook of Neuropsychology (eds. Boller, F. & Grafman, J.) 59–84 (Elsevier Science, Amsterdam, 1994).

    Google Scholar 

  4. Badre, D. Trends Cogn. Sci. 12, 193–200 (2008).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Christoff, K. & Gabrieli, J.D. Psychobiology 28, 168–186 (2000).

    Google Scholar 

  6. Fuster, J.M. The Prefrontal Cortex: Anatomy, Physiology and Neuropsychology of the Frontal Lobe (Lippincott-Raven, Philadelphia, 1997).

    Google Scholar 

  7. Koechlin, E., Ody, C. & Kouneiher, F. Science 302, 1181–1185 (2003).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  8. Koechlin, E. & Summerfield, C. Trends Cogn. Sci. 11, 229–235 (2007).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Mesulam, M.M. Ann. Neurol. 10, 309–325 (1981).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  10. Rushworth, M.F., Walton, M.E., Kennerley, S.W. & Bannerman, D.M. Trends Cogn. Sci. 8, 410–417 (2004).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  11. Botvinick, M.M., Braver, T.S., Barch, D.M., Carter, C.S. & Cohen, J.D. Psychol. Rev. 108, 624–652 (2001).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  12. Critchley, H.D. et al. Brain 126, 2139–2152 (2003).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Botvinick, M.M. Cogn. Affect. Behav. Neurosci. 7, 356–366 (2007).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Nachev, P., Rees, G., Parton, A., Kennard, C. & Husain, M. Curr. Biol. 15, 122–128 (2005).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  15. Isoda, M. & Hikosaka, O. Nat. Neurosci. 10, 240–248 (2007).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. and is in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, The author is at the Cognitive Neurology & Alzheimer's Disease Center, Northwestern University, Chicago, Illinois, USA, and Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, USA. t-egner@northwestern.edu,

    Tobias Egner

Authors
  1. Tobias Egner
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Egner, T. Prefrontal cortex and cognitive control: motivating functional hierarchies. Nat Neurosci 12, 821–822 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn0709-821

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nn0709-821

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing