Linked Life Data

17291759

Source:http://linkedlifedata.com/resource/pubmed/id/17291759

Statements in which the resource exists as a subject.
PredicateObject
rdf:type
lifeskim:mentions
pubmed:issue
4
pubmed:dateCreated
2007-2-19
pubmed:abstractText
When humans are engaged in goal-related processing, activity in prefrontal cortex is increased. However, it has remained unclear whether this prefrontal activity encodes a subject's current intention. Instead, increased levels of activity could reflect preparation of motor responses, holding in mind a set of potential choices, tracking the memory of previous responses, or general processes related to establishing a new task set. Here we study subjects who freely decided which of two tasks to perform and covertly held onto an intention during a variable delay. Only after this delay did they perform the chosen task and indicate which task they had prepared. We demonstrate that during the delay, it is possible to decode from activity in medial and lateral regions of prefrontal cortex which of two tasks the subjects were covertly intending to perform. This suggests that covert goals can be represented by distributed patterns of activity in the prefrontal cortex, thereby providing a potential neural substrate for prospective memory. During task execution, most information could be decoded from a more posterior region of prefrontal cortex, suggesting that different brain regions encode goals during task preparation and task execution. Decoding of intentions was most robust from the medial prefrontal cortex, which is consistent with a specific role of this region when subjects reflect on their own mental states.
pubmed:grant
pubmed:language
eng
pubmed:journal
pubmed:citationSubset
IM
pubmed:status
MEDLINE
pubmed:month
Feb
pubmed:issn
0960-9822
pubmed:author
pubmed:issnType
Print
pubmed:day
20
pubmed:volume
17
pubmed:owner
NLM
pubmed:authorsComplete
Y
pubmed:pagination
323-8
pubmed:dateRevised
2008-12-8
pubmed:meshHeading
pubmed:year
2007
pubmed:articleTitle
Reading hidden intentions in the human brain.
pubmed:affiliation
Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, 04103 Leipzig, Germany. haynes@cbs.mpg.de
pubmed:publicationType
Journal Article, Comparative Study, Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't