Distinct lateral prefrontal regions are organized in an anterior-posterior functional gradient

Camilo Libedinsky

Abstract:

The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) is composed of multiple anatomically defined regions involved in higher-order cog-
nitive processes, including working memory and selective attention. It is organized in an anterior-posterior global gradient
where posterior regions track changes in the environment, whereas anterior regions support abstract neural representations.
However, it remains unknown if such a global gradient results from a smooth gradient that spans regions or an emergent
property arising from functionally distinct regions, that is, an areal gradient. Here, we recorded single neurons in the dlPFC
of nonhuman primates trained to perform a memory-guided saccade task with an interfering distractor and analyzed their
physiological properties along the anterior–posterior axis. We found that these physiological properties were best described
by an areal gradient. Further, population analyses revealed that there is a distributed representation of spatial information
across the dlPFC. Our results validate the functional boundaries between anatomically defined dlPFC regions and highlight
the distributed nature of computations underlying working memory across the dlPFC