The lateral prefrontal cortex is a particularly well-connected part of the brain. Neurons there communicate with processing centers throughout the rest of the brain, gathering information and sending commands to implement executive control over behavior. Now, scientists at MIT’s McGovern Institute have mapped these connections and revealed an unexpected order within them: The lateral prefrontal cortex, they’ve found, contains maps of other major parts of the brain’s cortex.
The researchers, led by postdoctoral researcher Rui Xu and McGovern Institute Director Robert Desimone, report that the lateral prefrontal cortex contains a set of maps that represent the major processing centers in the other parts of the cortex, including the temporal and parietal lobes. Their organization likely supports the lateral prefrontal cortex’s roles managing complex functions such as attention and working memory, which require integrating information from multiple sources and coordinating activity elsewhere in the brain. The findings are published November 4, 2021, in the journal Neuron.
