19 Facts About Prefrontal cortex

In mammalian brain anatomy, the prefrontal cortex covers the front part of the frontal lobe of the cerebral cortex.

Prefrontal cortex has been defined based on cytoarchitectonics by the presence of a cortical granular layer IV.

Many of the early cytoarchitectonic researchers restricted the use of the term prefrontal to a much smaller region of cortex including the gyrus rectus and the gyrus rostralis .

Third definition of the prefrontal cortex is the area of frontal cortex whose electrical stimulation does not lead to observable movements.

Prefrontal cortex is highly interconnected with much of the brain, including extensive connections with other cortical, subcortical and brain stem sites.

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The dorsal prefrontal cortex is especially interconnected with brain regions involved with attention, cognition and action, while the ventral prefrontal cortex interconnects with brain regions involved with emotion.

The prefrontal cortex receives inputs from the brainstem arousal systems, and its function is particularly dependent on its neurochemical environment.

Medial prefrontal cortex has been implicated in the generation of slow-wave sleep, and prefrontal atrophy has been linked to decreases in SWS.

Prefrontal cortex atrophy occurs naturally as individuals age, and it has been demonstrated that older adults experience impairments in memory consolidation as their medial prefrontal cortices degrade.

Ventrolateral prefrontal cortex has been implicated in various aspects of speech production and language comprehension.

Original studies of Fuster and of Goldman-Rakic emphasized the fundamental ability of the prefrontal cortex to represent information not currently in the environment, and the central role of this function in creating the "mental sketch pad".

The prefrontal cortex is presumed to act as a high-level gating or filtering mechanism that enhances goal-directed activations and inhibits irrelevant activations.

Prefrontal cortex is of significant importance when top-down processing is needed.

Once the concept of working memory was established in contemporary neuroscience by Alan Baddeley, these neuropsychological findings contributed to the theory that the prefrontal cortex implements working memory and, in some extreme formulations, only working memory.

Various areas of the prefrontal cortex have been implicated in a multitude of critical functions regarding speech production, language comprehension, and response planning before speaking.

Right prefrontal cortex has been found to be responsible for coordinating the retrieval of explicit memory for use in speech, whereas the deactivation of the left is responsible for mediating implicit memory retrieval to be used in verb generation.

The right lateral prefrontal cortex is implicated in the planning of complex behavior, and together with bilateral BA45, they act to maintain focus and coherence during speech production.

The advanced neurocircuitry and self-regulatory function of the human prefrontal cortex is associated with the higher sentience in humans, as the prefrontal cortex in humans occupies a far larger percentage of the brain than in any other animal.

Clinical trials have begun on certain drugs that have been shown to improve prefrontal cortex function, including guanfacine, which acts through the alpha-2A adrenergic receptor.