Trends in Cognitive Sciences
OpinionThe Dorsal Frontoparietal Network: A Core System for Emulated Action
Section snippets
The Domain-General Role of Dorsal Frontoparietal Cortex
Human cognition is sustained by structurally and functionally organized networks of the brain, often labeled using broad anatomical or functional descriptors 1, 2, 3. One of the most prominent, the dFPN (see Glossary), connects the superior parietal cortex with dorsal premotor cortex (PMd) [4]. These regions exhibit a strongly correlated pattern of activation at rest and during various motor or cognitive tasks, such as reaching and grasping, saccades and spatial attention, mental rotation, or
An Outline of the Emulation Account of dFPN Function
Action emulation is the abstract, offline representation of movements expressed in terms of their pragmatics (action goals) and kinematics (movement patterns). The term ‘emulation’ is borrowed from computer science, where it describes the ability of a program to imitate the behavior of other programs. The existence of emulation processes in motor planning is inferred from the observation that motor control relies on predictions of the consequences of motor plans (Figure 1A). Performing a
The dFPN Is a Common Substrate for Motor and Cognitive Processes
One of the central tenets that the action emulation account has in common with other accounts is that a more complex cognitive process may emerge from simpler processes if it shares neural sources and uses overlapping computational mechanisms. Resting-state fMRI connectivity defines the anatomy of the dFPN (Box 1) and provides tentative support for this assumption. Although resting-state oscillations do not inform about the cognitive processes occurring in a network, they suggest that
Interdependencies between Motor and Cognitive Functions Sustained by the dFPN
The first prediction of the emulation account is that behavioral studies should support a common functional origin of real and simulated action. Given that simulated movement cannot be directly observed, much of the evidence favoring this point is deduced from reaction times for real and imagined actions [65]. For example, the duration of real movements and estimated durations of imagined movements are indistinguishable for horizontal, uphill or downhill walking [66], hand rotation [67], mental
Structural and Virtual Damage of the dFPN
The emulation account further predicts that action planning, mental rotation, spatial attention, and working memory should all suffer following damage to the dorsal premotor and parietal cortex. PPC lesions lead to severe deficits of goal-oriented movements, known as optic ataxia, which are particularly evident in peripheral vision and when online correction of movement is required 89, 90. Electrical stimulation of the PPC evokes an intention to move, or even the belief that the contralateral
Concluding Remarks
Domain-general cognitive systems are a distinctive feature of the human mind, forming the bedrock for the remarkable evolutionary expansion of reasoning capacity and general intelligence in humans. How domain-general properties are acquired has been a source of much theorizing. Functional imaging, behavioral, developmental, and human lesion studies support the hypothesis that the domain-general role of the dFPN evolved through synergy between isolated cognitive components and the core function
Acknowledgments
Supported by grants from the Swiss National Science Foundation and the Novartis Foundation. We wish to thank Britt Anderson, Klemens Gutbrod, Georg Kerkhoff, René Müri, and Guy Vingerhoets, as well as three anonymous reviewers, whose insightful comments contributed to shape our arguments.
Glossary
- Dorsal frontoparietal network (dFPN)
- functional network connecting the superior parietal cortex with the dorsal premotor cortex.
- Efference copy
- internal copy of a motor plan that becomes available to sensory and cognitive systems generating a prediction of movement outcome.
- Emulation
- abstract representation and offline maintenance of the kinematic properties of a movement plan.
- Forward model
- mental representation of a movement plan that allows predicting action outcomes by comparing a predicted state
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