The Role of Medial Prefrontal Cortex in Memory and Decision Making

By David R. Euston, A. Gruber, Bruce L. McNaughton. 2012

1,455 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Some have claimed that the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) mediates decision making. Others suggest mPFC is selectively involved in the retrieval of remote long-term memory. Yet others suggests mPFC supports memory and consolidation on time-scales ranging from seconds to days. How can all these roles be reconciled? We propose that the function of the mPFC is to learn associations between context, locations, events, and corresponding adaptive responses, particularly emotional responses. Thus, the ubiquitous involvement of mPFC in both memory and decision making may be due to the fact that almost all such tasks entail the ability to recall the best action or emotional response to specific events in a particular place and time. An interaction between multiple memory systems may explain the changing importance of mPFC to different types of memories over time. In particular, mPFC likely relies on the hippocampus to support rapid learning and memory consolidation.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Cognitive Neuroscience

1. Nathaniel D. Daw
2. Samuel J. Gershman
3. Matthew Botvinick
4. Ida Momennejad
5. Mattias P. Karlsson
6. Loren M. Frank
7. Hava T. Siegelmann
8. Terrence J. Sejnowski

In Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

1. Matthew Botvinick
2. K. Tye
3. Nathaniel D. Daw
4. Samuel J. Gershman
5. Hava T. Siegelmann
6. Katie A. McLaughlin

Citations in the corpus

• A modeling framework for adaptive lifelong learning with transfer and savings through gating in the prefrontal cortex (2020, background): “A critical feature of the PFC is the ability to retain knowledge from past experiences in the form of learned connectivity patterns (52).”
• Distinct hippocampal-cortical memory representations for experiences associated with movement versus immobility (2017, positive): “DOI: https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.27621 1 of 26 McNaughton, 1993) and PFC maintains information about other variables including those related to task performance (Euston et al., 2012; Jung et al., 1998; Pratt and Mizumori, 2001).”
• The successor representation in human reinforcement learning (2016, background): “Ventromedial PFC is well connected to the hippocampus 47 and is thought to mediate sampling information from episodic memory with the goal of decision-making 55 and consolidation 56,57 , as well as the comparison and integration of value, abstract state-based inference 58 , and latent causes 59 .”
• Childhood Adversity and Neural Development: A Systematic Review (2019, background): “Connectivity between the hippocampus and PFC underlies memory consolidation and retrieval (Euston et al. 2012).”