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Visual Activation in Prefrontal Cortex is Stronger in Monkeys than in Humans

K.U. Leuven Medical School, Belgium

Wim Vanduffel

K.U. Leuven Medical School, Belgium
MGH/MIT/HMS Athinoula A. Martino's Center for Biomedical Imaging, Charlestown, MA

Denis Fize, Koen Nelissen, Hiromasa Sawamura, Svetlana Georgieva and Rufin Vogels

K.U. Leuven Medical School, Belgium

David Van Essen

Washington University

Guy A. Orban

K.U. Leuven Medical School, Belgium

The prefrontal cortex supports many cognitive abilities, which humans share to some degree with monkeys. The specialized functions of the prefrontal cortex depend both on the nature of its inputs from other brain regions and on distinctive aspects of local processing. We used functional MRI to compare prefrontal activity between monkey and human subjects when they viewed identical images of objects, either intact or scrambled. Visual object-related activation of the lateral prefrontal cortex was observed in both species, but was stronger in monkeys than in humans, both in magnitude (factors 2–3) and in spatial extent (fivefold or more as a percentage of prefrontal volume). This difference was observed for two different stimulus sets, at two field strengths, and over a range of tasks. These results suggest that there may be more volitional control over visual processing in humans than in monkeys.

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