Architecture of central executive functions in the human prefrontal cortex

The prefrontal cortex subserves executive control, i.e. the ability to select actions and to organize behavior in relation to internal drives and subjective preferences, ranging from the simplest behaviors, like choosing an apple or a pear in a fruit basket, to the most complex ones like deciding the next move in a game of chess. Whether simple or complex, decisions to act emerge from the combination of preferences (e.g. I prefer apples), drives (e.g. I want an apple) and choices (e.g. I choose the apple). Empirical studies suggests that broadly speaking, preferences, drives and choices are respectively processed in the ventral, medial and lateral sector of the frontal lobes [1]. The lateral sector, and especially the portion lying anterior to the premotor cortex, the so-called lateral prefrontal cortex, is the brain region that evolved the most recently in hominids and is involved in action selection, when action choices are context-dependent, a function usually referred to as cognitive control [2] .