Functional gradients in the human lateral prefrontal cortex revealed by a comprehensive coordinate-based...

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Cognitive Science

Background:

• The functional organization of the human lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC) is crucial for flexible goal-directed behavior but remains debated.
• Previous meta-analyses of LPFC function have been limited in scope and specificity due to analytical tool constraints.

Approach:

• Employed NeuroLang, a novel probabilistic first-order logic programming approach for expressive meta-analysis.
• Analyzed data from 14,371 neuroimaging studies to infer organizing principles of the LPFC.

Key Points:

• Identified a rostrocaudal gradient explaining the most variance and a dorsoventral gradient explaining the second most variance in LPFC connectivity.
• Revealed a unimodal-to-transmodal spectrum of coactivation and a concrete-to-abstract structure-function association axis along the rostrocaudal dimension.
• Inferred inter-hemispheric asymmetries related to language, memory, response inhibition, and sensory processing along the rostrocaudal gradient.

Conclusions:

• Provides a comprehensive meta-analytic map of the LPFC's functional organization.
• Establishes a quantitative foundation for future hypothesis generation regarding LPFC function.