The Japanese journal of neuropsychology

Full Text of this Article
in Japanese PDF (272K)

ArticleTitle	Processing reward information in the prefrontal cortex
Language	J
AuthorList	Masataka Watanabe
Affiliation	Department of Psychology, Tokyo Metropolitan Institute for Neuroscience
Publication	Japanese Journal of Neuropsychology: 17 (2), 104-109, 2001
Received
Accepted
Abstract	The prefrontal cortex (PFC), which is considered to be the center of the cognitive-executive control, is involved also in motivational operations. There are neurons in the primate PFC, which show activity changes in relation to coding reinforcement and/or error during the task performance. Also, there are PFC neurons that show reward expectancy-related activity, by showing differential activity depending on the difference of the reward that would be given. The orbital part of PFC (orbitofrontal cortex: OFC) has been indicated to be more concerned with motivation operations. The lateral part of PFC (LPFC) is considered to be more concerned with executive function. Considering that there are LPFC neurons which are involved in both working memory and reward expectancy, and that enhancement of working memory-related activity is observed in LPFC neurons when the more preferred reward is used, LPFC may be related to the integration of motivational and executive information for goal-directed behavior.
Keywords	Motivational function, Cognitive and executive function, Reward expectancy, Prefrontal cortex, Neuronal activity