Functional specialization of areas along the anterior–posterior axis of the primate prefrontal cortex

Abstract

Functional specialization of areas along the anterior–posterior axis of the lateral prefrontal cortex has been speculated but little evidence exists about distinct neurophysiological properties between prefrontal sub-regions. To address this issue we divided the lateral prefrontal cortex into a posterior-dorsal, a mid-dorsal, an anterior-dorsal, a posterior-ventral, and an anterior ventral region. Selectivity for spatial locations, shapes, and colors was evaluated in six monkeys never trained in working memory tasks, while they viewed the stimuli passively. Recordings from over two thousand neurons revealed systematic differences between anterior and posterior regions. In the dorsal prefrontal cortex, anterior regions exhibited the largest receptive fields, longest response latencies, and lowest amount of information for stimuli. In the ventral prefrontal cortex, posterior regions were characterized by a low percentage of responsive neurons to any stimuli we used, consistent with high specialization for stimulus features. Additionally, spatial information was more prominent in the dorsal and color in ventral regions. Our results provide neurophysiological evidence for a rostral-caudal gradient of stimulus selectivity through the prefrontal cortex, suggesting that posterior areas are selective for stimuli even when these are not releant for execution of a task, and that anterior areas are likely engaged in more abstract operations.