Desirability, availability, credit assignment, category learning, and attention: Cognitive-emotional and working memory dynamics of orbitofrontal, ventrolateral, and dorsolateral prefrontal cortices

Abstract

Background:The prefrontal cortices play an essential role in cognitive-emotional and working memory processes through interactions with multiple brain regions.Methods:This article further develops a unified neural architecture that explains many recent and classical data about prefrontal function and makes testable predictions.Results:Prefrontal properties of desirability, availability, credit assignment, category learning, and feature-based attention are explained. These properties arise through interactions of orbitofrontal, ventrolateral prefrontal, and dorsolateral prefrontal cortices with the inferotemporal cortex, perirhinal cortex, parahippocampal cortices; ventral bank of the principal sulcus, ventral prearcuate gyrus, frontal eye fields, hippocampus, amygdala, basal ganglia, hypothalamus, and visual cortical areas V1, V2, V3A, V4, middle temporal cortex, medial superior temporal area, lateral intraparietal cortex, and posterior parietal cortex. Model explanations also include how the value of vis...