Stefan Everling
Professor
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(Joint Appointment with Psychology) |
Functional Organization of the Primate Prefrontal Cortex Among the different areas of the brain, few have attracted as much attention as its anterior pole, the prefrontal cortex. Dysfunctions of the prefrontal cortex have been implicated in many psychiatric and neurological disorders, including schizophrenia, autism, and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. An important step toward our understanding of prefrontal dysfunction in these disorders are insights into the functional magnetic imaging (fMRI) studies, however; have yielded conflicting data and have resulted in different models of PFC organization. The main objective of this research proposal is to reconcile these conflicting results by recording fMRI signals in human subjects and fMRI signals and neural activity in the monkeys. The relationship between the fMRI signal and underlying neural activity in cognitive tasks has emerged as one of the most important areas in neuroscience. This research program will provide important insights into this relationship and will yield a better understanding of the functional organization of the prefrontal cortex. This knowledge will also be vital to predict the effects of prefrontal strokes and trauma.
Johnston K, Everling S (2006) Neural activity in monkey prefrontal cortex is modulated by task context and behavioural instruction during delayed-match-to-sample and conditional pro-saccade/anti- saccade tasks. J. Cogn. Neurosci. 18:749:765. Everling S, Tinsley CJ, Gaffan D, Duncan J (2006) Selective representation of task-relevant objects and locations in the monkey prefrontal cortex. Eur. J. Neurosci. 23: 2197-2214. Everling S, DeSouza, JFX (2005) Rule-dependent activity for prosaccades and antisaccades in the primate prefrontal cortex. J. Cogn. Neurosci. 17: 1483-1496. Ford KA, Goltz HG, Brown MRG, Everling S (2005) Neural processes associated with anti-saccade task performance investigated with event- related fMRI. J. Neurophysiol. 94: 429-440 Munoz DP, Everling S (2004) Look away: The anti-saccade task and the voluntary control of eye movement. Nature Reviews Neuroscience 5: 218-228
