10 Sep 2015
September 10, 2015

Discrimination of Visual Categories Based on Behavioral Relevance in Widespread Regions of Frontoparietal Cortex

Neuroscience

Erez and Duncan elegantly show that the prefrontal cortex only cares about behavioral (goal) relevance.  Human subjects detected whether images from one of two visual categories were present in a scene.  The prefrontal cortex did not distinguish between the two categories but did distinguish whether an image was one the two categories (i.e., a target) or not (a non-target).

Erez, Y. and Duncan, J. Discrimination of Visual Categories Based on Behavioral Relevance in Widespread Regions of Frontoparietal Cortex.  The Journal of Neuroscience, 9 September 2015, 35(36): 12383-12393; doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1134-15.2015

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About the Author


The Miller Lab uses experimental and theoretical approaches to study the neural basis of the high-level cognitive functions that underlie complex goal-directed behavior. ekmillerlab.mit.edu