PREFRONTAL CORTEX AND ACTION SEQUENCES: A REVIEW ON NEURAL COMPUTATIONAL MODELS

ILARIA GAUDIELLO
Department of Communication Disciplines, University of Bologna,
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MARCO TULLIO LIUZZA
Department of Psychology, University of Bologna,

DANIELE CALIGIORE
Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, National Research Council,(ISTC-CNR),Roma, Italy

The prefrontal cortex (PFC) can be considered the central executive of cognitive control, responsible for the flexibility of human behavior. By a switching mechanism PFC can update rules and goals representations stored in working memory, so as to performance novel task and accomplish complex routines. PFC functional organization and relation with specific subcortical areas give an account of representations active mantainance that allows to achieve a goal through a series of sub-goals. On the basis of the most recent studies, we present a rieview of the theories concerning PFC role and neural computational models. The paper incudes a focus section on models developed to study the role of PFC in action-sequences learning and performing.

Keywords: Actions sequences; Prefrontal Cortex; Neural networks; Time integration.

 Article in press: Proceedings of WIvace 2008 Cognitive processes: “Prefrontal cortex and action sequences: a review on neural computational models”, Venezia 8-9 sept.