Dorsomedial prefrontal cortex

The dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC[1][2] or DMPFC[3][4] is a section of the prefrontal cortex in some species' brain anatomy. It includes portions of Brodmann areas BA8, BA9, BA10, BA24 and BA32,[5] although some authors identify it specifically with BA8 and BA9.[3][6] Some notable sub-components include the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (BA24 and BA32),[1][5] the prelimbic cortex,[1][5] and the infralimbic cortex.[2]

Dorsomedial prefrontal cortex
The location of the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex is marked as "DMPFC"
Details
Part ofPrefrontal cortex
PartsAnterior cingulate cortex, prelimbic cortex
Anatomical terms of neuroanatomy

Functions

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Evidence shows that the dmPFC plays several roles in humans. The dmPFC is identified to play roles in processing a sense of self, integrating social impressions, theory of mind, morality judgments, empathy, decision making, altruism, fear and anxiety information processing, and top-down motor cortex inhibition. [7][8][9][10] [11] The dmPFC also modulates or regulates emotional responses and heart rate in situations of fear or stress and plays a role in long-term memory [1].[4] Some argue that the dmPFC is made up of several smaller subregions that are more task-specific.[12] The dmPFC is attributed with many roles in the brain. Despite this, there is no definitive understanding of the exact role dmPFC plays, and the underlying mechanisms giving rise to its function(s) in the brain remain to be seen.

Identity

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The dmPFC is thought to be one component of how people formulate an identity, or a sense of self[7][13] When actors were tasked with performing a character, fMRI scans showed relative suppression of the dmPFC compared to baseline tasks.[14] This same deactivation was not seen in the other tasks performed by the actors. The authors theorize that this may be due to the actors actively suppressing their own sense of self to portray another character. Similarly, the dmPFC has been shown to be inactive in individuals with psychological disassociation.[13]

Social judgments and theory of mind

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Research has indicated that the dmPFC plays a role in creating social impressions.[8] One study showed that by using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to the dmPFC during a social judgment task directly disrupts a person's ability to form social judgments.[8] Additionally, the dmPFC is active when people are trying to understand the perspectives, beliefs, and thoughts of others, an ability known as Theory of mind.[15] The dmPFC has also been shown to play a role in altruism. The amount that a person's dmPFC was active during a socially-based task predicted how much money that person would later donate to others.[10] Furthermore, the dmPFC has been shown to be play a role in morality decisions.[16]

Emotion

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The dmPFC has been shown to be involved in voluntary and involuntary emotional regulation.[17][18] When recalling negative memories, older adults show activation in the dmPFC. This is believed to act as mechanism that reduces the overall experienced negativity of the event.[17] The dmPFC is thought to be impaired in individuals diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder resulting in disrupted emotional regulation.[18]

Decision making

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In addition to social judgments, the dmPFC shows increased activation during complex decision making tasks.[19] Other studies have shown increased activation in the dmPFC when a person must decide between two equally-likely outcomes, as well as when a decision is counter to their behavioral tendencies.[20][21]

Other species

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The DMPFC can also be identified in monkeys.[22] The prelimbic system in mice is believed to be functionally analogous to the dmPFC's emotional regulation function in humans.[23]

Animal models

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In rats, the dmPFC has been shown to exert top-down control over the motor regions, although the exact mechanisms of how this is accomplished remain unknown.[9] Another study looked at how dopamine receptors in the dmPFC play a role in regulating fear in rats.[24]

An experiment with mice found that optogenetic stimulation of the dmPFC increased their perseverance, motivational drive and grit causing them to assume a more dominant role in social hierarchies.[25] Additionally, researchers have shown that the dmPFC 5-HT6 receptors play a role in regulating anxiety-like behaviors in mice.[26]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ a b c d Corsi, P.S.; Christen, Y. (2012). Epigenetics, Brain and Behavior. Research and Perspectives in Neurosciences. Springer. p. 88. ISBN 978-3-642-27912-6. Retrieved 1 May 2019.
  2. ^ a b Gamond, L.; Cattaneo, Z. (2016). "The Dorsomedial Prefrontal Cortex Plays a Causal Role in Mediating In-group Advantage in Emotion Recognition: A TMS Study". Neuropsychologia. 93 (Pt A). Elsevier: 312–317. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2016.11.011. PMID 27865968. S2CID 207240951.
  3. ^ a b Lieberman, M.D. (2013). Social: Why Our Brains are Wired to Connect. OUP Oxford. p. 187. ISBN 978-0-19-964504-6.
  4. ^ a b Jean Decety J, Batson CD (2007). Interpersonal Sensitivity – Entering Others' Worlds. Psychology Press. p. 243. ISBN 978-1-84169-838-0.
  5. ^ a b c Leary, M.R.; Tangney, J.P. (2012). Handbook of Self and Identity. Guilford Publications. p. 640. ISBN 978-1-4625-0305-6. Retrieved 2 May 2019.
  6. ^ Dougherty, D.D.; Rauch, S.L. (2008). Psychiatric Neuroimaging Research: Contemporary Strategies. American Psychiatric Publishing. p. 243. ISBN 978-1-58562-790-5.
  7. ^ a b Gusnard DA, Akbudak E, Shulman GL, Raichle ME (March 2001). "Medial prefrontal cortex and self-referential mental activity: relation to a default mode of brain function". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 98 (7): 4259–64. doi:10.1073/pnas.071043098. PMC 31213. PMID 11259662.
  8. ^ a b c Ferrari C, Lega C, Vernice M, Tamietto M, Mende-Siedlecki P, Vecchi T, Todorov A, Cattaneo Z (January 2016). "The Dorsomedial Prefrontal Cortex Plays a Causal Role in Integrating Social Impressions from Faces and Verbal Descriptions". Cerebral Cortex. 26 (1): 156–65. doi:10.1093/cercor/bhu186. hdl:2318/1506221. PMID 25165063.
  9. ^ a b Narayanan NS, Laubach M (December 2006). "Top-down control of motor cortex ensembles by dorsomedial prefrontal cortex". Neuron. 52 (5): 921–31. doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2006.10.021. PMC 3995137. PMID 17145511.
  10. ^ a b Waytz A, Zaki J, Mitchell JP (May 2012). "Response of dorsomedial prefrontal cortex predicts altruistic behavior". The Journal of Neuroscience. 32 (22): 7646–50. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.6193-11.2012. PMC 3387686. PMID 22649243.
  11. ^ Mitchell JP, Macrae CN, Banaji MR (May 2004). "Encoding-specific effects of social cognition on the neural correlates of subsequent memory". The Journal of Neuroscience. 24 (21): 4912–7. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0481-04.2004. PMC 6729362. PMID 15163682.
  12. ^ Eickhoff SB, Laird AR, Fox PT, Bzdok D, Hensel L (January 2016). "Functional Segregation of the Human Dorsomedial Prefrontal Cortex". Cerebral Cortex. 26 (1): 304–21. doi:10.1093/cercor/bhu250. PMC 4677979. PMID 25331597.
  13. ^ a b Meares R (22 October 2012). A Dissociation Model of Borderline Personality Disorder (Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology). W. W. Norton. p. 109. ISBN 978-0-393-70861-5.
  14. ^ Brown S, Cockett P, Yuan Y (March 2019). "The neuroscience of Romeo and Juliet: an fMRI study of acting". Royal Society Open Science. 6 (3): 181908. doi:10.1098/rsos.181908. PMC 6458376. PMID 31032043.
  15. ^ Isoda M, Noritake A (December 2013). "What makes the dorsomedial frontal cortex active during reading the mental states of others?". Frontiers in Neuroscience. 7: 232. doi:10.3389/fnins.2013.00232. PMC 3852025. PMID 24367287.
  16. ^ Bzdok D, Schilbach L, Vogeley K, Schneider K, Laird AR, Langner R, Eickhoff SB (October 2012). "Parsing the neural correlates of moral cognition: ALE meta-analysis on morality, theory of mind, and empathy". Brain Structure & Function. 217 (4): 783–96. doi:10.1007/s00429-012-0380-y. PMC 3445793. PMID 22270812.
  17. ^ a b Ford JH, Kensinger EA (December 2019). "Older adults recruit dorsomedial prefrontal cortex to decrease negativity during retrieval of emotionally complex real-world events". Neuropsychologia. 135: 107239. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2019.107239. PMID 31678107. S2CID 204964109.
  18. ^ a b Phillips ML, Ladouceur CD, Drevets WC (September 2008). "A neural model of voluntary and automatic emotion regulation: implications for understanding the pathophysiology and neurodevelopment of bipolar disorder". Molecular Psychiatry. 13 (9): 829, 833–57. doi:10.1038/mp.2008.65. PMC 2745893. PMID 18574483.
  19. ^ Venkatraman V, Rosati AG, Taren AA, Huettel SA (October 2009). "Resolving response, decision, and strategic control: evidence for a functional topography in dorsomedial prefrontal cortex". The Journal of Neuroscience. 29 (42): 13158–64. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2708-09.2009. PMC 2801415. PMID 19846703.
  20. ^ Pochon JB, Riis J, Sanfey AG, Nystrom LE, Cohen JD (March 2008). "Functional imaging of decision conflict". The Journal of Neuroscience. 28 (13): 3468–73. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.4195-07.2008. PMC 6670602. PMID 18367612.
  21. ^ Paulus MP, Hozack N, Frank L, Brown GG (April 2002). "Error rate and outcome predictability affect neural activation in prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate during decision-making". NeuroImage. 15 (4): 836–46. doi:10.1006/nimg.2001.1031. PMID 11906224. S2CID 18634899.
  22. ^ Brookhart, J.M.; Mountcastle, V.B.; Brooks, V.B.; Geiger, S.R. (1981). Handbook of physiology: a critical, comprehensive presentation of physiological knowledge and concepts. American Physiological Society. ISBN 978-0-683-01105-0.
  23. ^ Acton, Q.A. (2013). Advances in Basal Ganglia Research and Application. Atlanta, GA: ScholarlyEditions. p. 20. ISBN 978-1-4816-6955-9. Retrieved 1 May 2019.
  24. ^ Stubbendorff C, Hale E, Cassaday HJ, Bast T, Stevenson CW (June 2019). "Dopamine D1-like receptors in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex regulate contextual fear conditioning". Psychopharmacology. 236 (6): 1771–1782. doi:10.1007/s00213-018-5162-7. PMC 6602997. PMID 30656366.
  25. ^ Zhou, Tingting; Zhu, Hong; Fan, Zhengxiao; Wang, Fei; Chen, Yang; Liang, Hexing; Yang, Zhongfei; Zhang, Lu; Lin, Longnian; Zhan, Yang; Wang, Zheng; Hu, Hailan (14 July 2017). "History of winning remodels thalamo-PFC circuit to reinforce social dominance". Science. 357 (6347): 162–168. doi:10.1126/science.aak9726.
  26. ^ Geng F, Tian J, Wu JL, Luo Y, Zou WJ, Peng C, Lu GF (February 2018). "Dorsomedial prefrontal cortex 5-HT6 receptors regulate anxiety-like behavior". Cognitive, Affective & Behavioral Neuroscience. 18 (1): 58–67. doi:10.3758/s13415-017-0552-6. PMID 29204799.