Decoding the Content of Delayed Intentions

Abstract

Rostrolateral prefrontal cortex (RLPFC) plays a key role in our ability to postpone the execution of intended behaviors until after another activity has been performed. However, it is poorly understood in computational terms. One crucial question is whether RLPFC represents the content of delayed intentions or plays a nonspecific role. In this human functional magnetic resonance imaging study (n ϭ 32), RLPFC was active while participantsstoreddelayedintentionsduringadistractingongoingtask.Multivariateanalysisshowedthattheintendedcueforfutureactionand the intended behavior could be decoded from distinct posterior brain regions. However, the content of intentions could not be decoded from RLPFC itself. Functional connectivity analysis showed that RLPFC increased its coupling with content-representing regions during intention storage. Furthermore, trials with relatively high RLPFC activity were associated with enhanced decoding. Thus, RLPFC may enable realization of delayed intentions via interactions with posterior brain regions, which represent their content.

Prospective Memory Impairments in Alzheimer’s Disease and Behavioral Variant Frontotemporal Dementia: Clinical and Neural Correlates

“…The exact role of occipital regions in PM, and indeed in general episodic memory, remains to be elucidated, however, it is notable that lesions involving occipital regions are associated with gross impairments in retrospective and prospective memory [70]. It has further been suggested that occipital cortical regions may support cue encoding during PM tasks [18,23]. It will be important for future studies to delineate the contribution of these regions in order to understand how occipital atrophy in AD impacts PM performance.…”

“…Moreover, medial temporal lobe regions, including the hippocampus, are implicated in the retrieval of an action or recognition of a cue during PM tasks [21,22]. Finally human lesion studies [19] and functional neuroimaging studies [21,23] point to occipital involvement, with the suggestion that representations of the PM cue may be stored in occipital sites [23]. As such, the evidence to date reveals a distributed set of brain regions which support the capacity for PM performance.…”

Prospective memory deficits in illicit polydrug users are associated with the average long-term typical dose of ecstasy typically consumed in a single session.

“…Combining, the evidence set out above concerning the neural basis of PM performance and what is known regarding neural damage in ecstasy users, one clear area that is implicated is the frontopolar cortex (lateral BA10) which plays a crucial role in both time and event based PM (e.g., Gilbert, 2011;Okuda et al 2007) and which has been to shown to exhibit reduced SERT densities and cortical thinning in ecstasy/polydrug users (e.g., Kish et al, 2010). Indeed as noted above patients with right polar prefrontal BA10 lesions were shown to be impaired in time based PM (Volle et al 2011).…”

“…Later research has demonstrated the involvement of other cortical and subcortical areas. During the storage phase, in addition to lateral BA10, activity is also higher in the bilateral medial frontal gyrus (BA 8/32), the left precuneus and left parietal cortex (BA7) (Benoit, Gilbert, Frith, & Burgess, 2012), as well as a region in BA46 extending to the insular cortex and the anterior cingulate (Gilbert, 2011). Responding to the cue and retrieving the intention also results in increased activity in the VLPFC and lateral parietal cortex, the anterior cingulate, more superior regions of the DLPFC, as well as the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) (Simons, Schölvinck, Gilbert, Frith & Burgess, 2006).…”

Recent developments in multivariate pattern analysis for functional MRI

“…Exploiting its information-mapping nature, a number of studies have applied this approach to a vast range of research topics [15,16,22,25,26,30,[58][59][60][61][62][63][64] . On the other hand, searchlight MVPA can be considered as a featureselection method that reflects which voxels (features) are most informative in distinguishing stimuli (see 'Section 7 Summary of MVPA algorithms and parameters').…”