Effects of Local Inactivation of Monkey Medial Frontal Cortex in Learning of Sequential Procedures

To examine the role of the medial frontal cortex, supplementary motor area (SMA), and pre-SMA in the acquisition and control of sequential movements, we locally injected muscimol into 43 sites in the medial frontal cortex while monkeys (n = 2) performed a sequential button-press task. In this task, the monkey had to press two of 16 (4 × 4 matrix) buttons illuminated simultaneously in a predetermined order. A total of five pairs were presented in a fixed order for completion of a trial. To clarify the differential contribution of the medial frontal cortex for new acquisition and control of sequential movements, we used novel and learned sequences (that had been learned after extensive practice). We found that the number of errors increased for novel sequences, but not for learned sequences, after pre-SMA inactivations. A similar, but insignificant, trend was observed after SMA injections. The reaction time of button presses for both novel and learned sequences was prolonged by inactivations of both SMA and pre-SMA, with a trend for the effect to be larger for SMA inactivations. These findings suggest that the medial frontal cortex, especially pre-SMA, is related to the acquisition, rather than the storage or execution, of the correct order of button presses.

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Top–Down Inhibitory Control Exerted by the Medial Frontal Cortex during Action Selection under Conflict

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience ◽

10.1162/jocn_a_00421 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 25 (10) ◽

pp. 1634-1648 ◽

Cited By ~ 40

Author(s):

Julie Duque ◽

Etienne Olivier ◽

Matthew Rushworth

Keyword(s):

Frontal Cortex ◽

Primary Motor Cortex ◽

Single Pulse ◽

Medial Frontal Cortex ◽

Button Press ◽

Top Down ◽

Motor Representation ◽

Visuomotor Task ◽

Response Alternatives

Top–down control is critical to select goal-directed actions in changeable environments, particularly when several conflicting options compete for selection. In humans, this control system is thought to involve an inhibitory mechanism that suppresses the motor representation of unwanted responses to favor selection of the most appropriate action. Here, we aimed to evaluate the role of a region of the medial frontal cortex, the pre-SMA, in this form of inhibition by using a double coil TMS protocol combining repetitive TMS (rTMS) over the pre-SMA and a single-pulse TMS over the primary motor cortex (M1) during a visuomotor task that required participants to choose between a left or right button press according to an imperative cue. M1 stimulation allowed us to assess changes in motor excitability related to selected and nonselected (unwanted) actions, and rTMS was used to produce transient disruption of pre-SMA functioning. We found that when rTMS was applied over pre-SMA, inhibition of the nonselected movement representation was reduced. Importantly, this effect was only observed when the imperative cue produced a substantial amount of competition between the response alternatives. These results are consistent with previous studies pointing to a role of pre-SMA in competition resolution. In addition, our findings indicate that this function of pre-SMA involves the control of inhibitory influences directed at unwanted action representations.

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Neuronal Activity in Medial Frontal Cortex During Learning of Sequential Procedures

Journal of Neurophysiology ◽

10.1152/jn.1998.80.5.2671 ◽

1998 ◽

Vol 80 (5) ◽

pp. 2671-2687 ◽

Cited By ~ 166

Author(s):

Kae Nakamura ◽

Katsuyuki Sakai ◽

Okihide Hikosaka

Keyword(s):

Frontal Cortex ◽

Neuronal Activity ◽

Light Emitting Diode ◽

Cell Activity ◽

Posterior Part ◽

Motor Area ◽

Medial Frontal Cortex ◽

Button Press ◽

Light Emitting ◽

Sequential Procedures

Nakamura, Kae, Katsuyuki Sakai, and Okihide Hikosaka. Neuronal activity in medial frontal cortex during learning of sequential procedures. J. Neurophysiol. 80: 2671–2687, 1998. To study the role of medial frontal cortex in learning and memory of sequential procedures, we examined neuronal activity of the presupplementary motor area (pre-SMA) and supplementary motor area (SMA) while monkeys ( n = 2) performed a sequential button press task, “2 × 5 task.” In this paradigm, 2 of 16 (4 × 4 matrix) light-emitting diode buttons (called “set”) were illuminated simultaneously and the monkey had to press them in a predetermined order. A total of five sets (called “hyperset”) was presented in a fixed order for completion of a trial. We examined the neuronal activity of each cell using two kinds of hypersets: new hypersets that the monkey experienced for the first time for which he had to find the correct orders of button presses by trial-and-error and learned hypersets that the monkey had learned with extensive practice ( n = 16 and 10 for each monkey). To investigate whether cells in medial frontal cortex are involved in the acquisition of new sequences or execution of well-learned procedures, we examined three to five new hypersets and three to five learned hypersets for each cell. Among 345 task-related cells, we found 78 cells that were more active during performance of new hypersets than learned hypersets (new-preferring cells) and 18 cells that were more active for learned hypersets (learned-preferring cells). Among new-preferring cells, 33 cells showed a learning-dependent decrease of cell activity: their activity was highest at the beginning of learning and decreased as the animal acquired the correct response for each set with increasing reliability. In contrast, 11 learned-preferring cells showed a learning-dependent increase of neuronal activity. We found a difference in the anatomic distribution of new-preferring cells. The proportion of new-preferring cells was greater in the rostral part of the medial frontal cortex, corresponding to the pre-SMA, than the posterior part, the SMA. There was some trend that learned-preferring cells were more abundant in the SMA. These results suggest that the pre-SMA, rather than SMA, is more involved in the acquisition of new sequential procedures.

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Action Monitoring and Medial Frontal Cortex: Leading Role of Supplementary Motor Area

Science ◽

10.1126/science.1247412 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 343 (6173) ◽

pp. 888-891 ◽

Cited By ~ 133

Author(s):

F. Bonini ◽

B. Burle ◽

C. Liegeois-Chauvel ◽

J. Regis ◽

P. Chauvel ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Frontal Cortex ◽

Supplementary Motor Area ◽

Motor Area ◽

Medial Frontal Cortex ◽

Action Monitoring ◽

Leading Role

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Role of medial frontal cortex in word retrieval

NeuroImage ◽

10.1016/s1053-8119(00)91210-2 ◽

2000 ◽

Vol 11 (5) ◽

pp. S278

Author(s):

Hope Benefield ◽

Bruce Crosson ◽

M. Allison Cato ◽

Joseph R. Sadek ◽

Kaundinya Gopinath ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Frontal Cortex ◽

Word Retrieval ◽

Medial Frontal Cortex

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Shared neural representations of cognitive conflict and negative affect in the medial frontal cortex

10.1101/824839 ◽

2019 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Luc Vermeylen ◽

David Wisniewski ◽

Carlos González-García ◽

Vincent Hoofs ◽

Wim Notebaert ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Negative Affect ◽

Frontal Cortex ◽

Supplementary Motor Area ◽

Cognitive Conflict ◽

Medial Frontal Cortex ◽

Anterior Cingulate ◽

Dorsal Anterior Cingulate Cortex ◽

Neural Representations ◽

Fmri Study ◽

Multivariate Pattern

AbstractInfluential theories of medial frontal cortex (MFC) function suggest that the MFC registers cognitive conflict as an aversive signal, but no study directly tested this idea. Instead, recent studies suggested that non-overlapping regions in the MFC process conflict and affect. In this pre-registered human fMRI study, we used multivariate pattern analyses to identify which regions respond similarly to conflict and aversive signals. The results reveal that, of all conflict- and value-related regions, the ventral pre-supplementary motor area (or dorsal anterior cingulate cortex) showed a shared neural pattern response to different conflict and affect tasks. These findings challenge recent conclusions that conflict and affect are processed independently, and provide support for integrative views of MFC function.

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PW4-3 Role of the medial frontal cortex in communication

Clinical Neurophysiology ◽

10.1016/s1388-2457(10)60370-7 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 121 ◽

pp. S88

Author(s):

R. Kawashima

Keyword(s):

Frontal Cortex ◽

Medial Frontal Cortex

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The geometry of domain-general performance monitoring representations in the human medial frontal cortex

10.1101/2021.07.08.451594 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Zhongzheng Fu ◽

Danielle Beam ◽

Jeffrey M. Chung ◽

Chrystal M. Reed ◽

Adam N. Mamelak ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Frontal Cortex ◽

Performance Monitoring ◽

Cognitive Conflict ◽

Medial Frontal Cortex ◽

Neural Population ◽

Single Neurons ◽

Task Specialization ◽

Ex Post ◽

Open Question ◽

And Control

Flexibly adapting behavior to achieve a desired goal depends on the ability to monitor one's own performance. A key open question is how performance monitoring can be both highly flexible to support multiple tasks and specialized to support specific tasks. We characterized performance monitoring representations by recording single neurons in the human medial frontal cortex (MFC). Subjects performed two tasks that involve three types of cognitive conflict. Neural population representations of conflict, error and control demand generalized across tasks and time while at the same time also encoding task specialization. This arose from a combination of single neurons whose responses were task-invariant and non-linearly mixed. Neurons encoding conflict ex-post served to iteratively update internal estimates of control demand as predicted by a Bayesian model. These findings reveal how the MFC representation of evaluative signals are both abstract and specific, suggesting a mechanism for computing and maintaining control demand estimates across trials and tasks.

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Posterior Medial Frontal Cortex Regulates Sympathy: A TMS Study

10.31234/osf.io/hduac ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Colin Holbrook ◽

Marco Iacoboni ◽

Chelsea Gordon ◽

Shannon Proksch ◽

Harmony Makhfi ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Frontal Cortex ◽

Control Region ◽

Functional Role ◽

Potential Role ◽

Visual Area ◽

Medial Frontal Cortex ◽

Affective States ◽

Middle Temporal ◽

Harm To Others

Harm to some elicits greater sympathy than harm to others. Here, we examine the role of posterior medial frontal cortex (PMFC) in regulating sympathy, and explore the potential role of PMFC in the related phenomena of mentalizing and representing others as connected with oneself. We down-regulated either PMFC or a control region (middle temporal visual area), then assessed feelings of sympathy for and self-other overlap with two characters described as having suffered physical harm, and who were framed as adversarial or affiliative, respectively. We also measured mentalizing performance with regard to inferring the cognitive and affective states of the adversarial character. As hypothesized, down-regulating PMFC increased sympathy for both characters. Whereas we had predicted that down-regulating PMFC would decrease mentalizing ability given the postulated role of PMFC in the mentalizing network, participants in the PMFC down-regulation condition evinced greater second-order cognitive inference ability relative to controls. We observed no effect of the TMS manipulation on self-other overlap, although sympathy and self-other overlap were positively correlated. These findings are discussed as they may inform understanding of the functional role(s) of PMFC in regulating responses broadly linked with empathy.

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