Cognitive control in social situations: A role for the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex

Abstract

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we investigated brain activity elicited by a computer-animated child's actions that appeared consistent and inconsistent with a computeranimated adult's instuctions. Participants observed a computer-animated adult verbally instructing a computer-animated child to touch one of two objects. The child performed correctly in half the trials and incorrectly in the other half. We observed significantly greater activity when the child performed incorrectly compared to correctly in regions of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) that have been implicated in maintaining our intentions in working memory and implementing cognitive control. However, no such effects were found in regions of the posterior superior temporal sulcus (posterior STS) that have been posited to interpret other people's behavior. These findings extend the role of the DLPFC in cognitive control to evaluating the social outcomes of other people's behavior and provide important new constraints for theories of how the posterior STS contributes to social cognition.

Extraversion mediates the relationship between structural variations in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and social well-being

“…The mid-DLPFC is more commonly found to be implicated in working memory (Blumenfeld and Ranganath, 2006;Curtis and D'Esposito, 2003;Owen et al, 2005), cognitive control (Badre and Wagner, 2004;Greene et al, 2004;Lau and Passingham, 2007;MacDonald et al, 2000) and the integration between emotion and cognition such as emotional regulation (Goldin et al, 2008;Kalisch, 2009;Ray and Zald, 2012). Furthermore, this region is also found to represent behavior-guiding principles for evaluating the permissibility or fairness of observed behavior (i.e., social reasoning) (Barbey et al, 2009;Spitzer et al, 2007;Weissman et al, 2008), which are crucial for the formation of human moral, ethical and political systems of value and belief. In addition, the negative correlation between social well-being and regional structure might be related to the intracortical myelination and synaptic pruning during development, which is believed to increase the efficiency of cognitive processes (Kanai and Rees, 2011;Sowell et al, 2001;Paus, 2005;Takeuchi et al, 2014).…”

The Salience Network and Its Functional Architecture in a Perceptual Decision: An Effective Connectivity Study

“…The other brain regions activated included the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) and inferior parietal lobe (IPL). The dlPFC has been reported in various decision-making tasks (Adhikari et al, 2013;Carlson et al, 2006;de Lafuente et al, 2005;Hernandez et al, 2010;Lamichhane et al, 2014), and is also considered a part of the cognitive system (Miller et al, 2001;Pasupathy et al, 2005;Weissman et al, 2008). Another brain region, IPL, has also been reported in various decision-making tasks (Badre et al, 2005;Genovesio et al, 2004;Kuperberg et al, 2008;Muggleton et al, 2003;Tosoni et al, 2008).…”

Involvement of Neuroinflammation during Brain Development in Social Cognitive Deficits in Autism Spectrum Disorder and Schizophrenia

“…Top-down control of lower brain regions by the DLPFC enables us to make appropriate planning and action in social situations based on integration of information, including verbal and nonverbal cognition, working memory, and evaluation of immediate as well as future outcomes (Tanaka et al, 2004;Weissman et al, 2008;Heatherton and Wagner, 2011). The number and size of neuron are significantly increased in the DLPFC of ASD subjects (Courchesne et al, 2011).…”