Functional Imaging of the Human FEF

前额叶皮层（RFC）对适应性高阶认知行为至关重要， 各种各样的精神健康障碍，包括精神分裂症，（多动症），物质滥用障碍， 阿尔茨海默氏症和帕金森氏症，以及艾滋病相关的痴呆症。更好地理解基本神经 机制将导致改进的诊断、预后和治疗程序。虽然RFC 对于计划，维护，选择和执行意志行为至关重要，我们对它知之甚少 实现这些目标的机制。阻碍我们在这方面取得进展的障碍包括： 对RFC功能的关键动物工作如何转化为我们人类物种的理解不足 试图理解，2）缺乏对RFC如何通过其影响正在进行的行为的理解， 与其他大脑区域的功能性互动。在这里，我们提出了一个分而治之的战略， 了解RFC的功能。在AIM 1中，我们将本地化RFC的关键部分，即人 同源的猴子额眼场（FEF），并把它作为一个模型系统的详细研究RFC 功能协调发展的我们战略性地选择FEF作为我们的模型，因为1）与其他RFC领域不同，我们有 在人类中定位它的方法，2）来自猴子FEF的数据，与其他RFC领域相比，提供了 关于物种之间功能同源性的可测试预测，最重要的是3）FEF 与RFC一般所涉及的许多相同的高级认知行为有关。我们 将研究人类FEF用于计划，注意力，记忆和选择的机制。工作 在一个更好的定义和约束系统，如眼科系统，可能会很快导致机械 这些功能的帐户，可能是不太站得住脚的一个更复杂和更少的理解系统，如 整个RFC。尽管RFC被认为通过其功能性影响正在进行的行为， 由于与其他大脑区域的相互作用，缺乏证据支持这一理论。在AIM 2中，我们将使用 功能磁共振成像测量RFC和其他大脑区域之间的功能相互作用， 支持关键行为的网络。这两个AIMS共同包含两个功能专业化， 本地级和网络级的分布式处理，并将使我们能够测试关键假设 RFC如何支持意图、注意力和工作记忆。

The prefrontal cortex (RFC) is critical for adaptive higher-order cognitive behaviors that are compromised by a wide variety of mental health disorders including schizophrenia, (ADHD), substance abuse disorders, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's Disease, and AIDS-related dementia. A better understanding of basic neural mechanisms will lead to improved diagnostic, prognostic, and therapeutic procedures. Although the RFCis critical for the planning, maintenance, selection, and execution of willed behavior, we know very little about the mechanisms by which it accomplishes these goals. Barriers to our progress in this regard include 1) a poor understanding of how the crucial animal work on RFC functions translates to the human species we are trying to understand, and 2) a lack of understanding of how the RFC influences ongoing behavior through its functional interactions with other brain areas. Here we propose a divide-and-conquer strategy for better understanding the functions of the RFC. In AIM 1, we will localize a key portion of the RFC, the human homolog of the monkey frontal eye field (FEF) and treat it as a model system for detailed study of RFC functions. We strategically chose the FEF as our model because 1) unlike other RFC areas, we have methods for localizing it in humans, 2) data from monkey FEF, as compared to other RFC areas, offer testable predictions about the functional homologies between the species, and most importantly 3) the FEF is implicated in many of the same high-level cognitive behaviors that the RFC in general is implicated. We will study the mechanisms that the human FEF uses for planning, attention, memory, and selection. Working within a better-defined and constrained system like the oculomotor system may quickly lead to mechanistic accounts of these functions that may be less tenable in a more complicated and less understood system like the RFC as a whole. Although the RFC is thought to influence ongoing behavior through its functional interactions with other brain areas, there is a dearth of evidence to support this theory. In AIM 2, we will use fMRI to measure functional interactions between the RFC and other brain areas that together may form networks supporting the critical behaviors. Together, the two AIMS embrace both functional specialization at the local level and distributed processing at the network level and will allow us to test critical hypotheses about how the RFC supports intention, attention, and working memory.