When the same response has different meanings: recoding the response meaning in the lateral prefrontal cortex

The ability to adapt our behavioral repertoire to different situations and tasks is crucial for our behavioral control. Since the same motor behavior can have different meanings in different task situations, we often have to change the meaning of our responses when we get into a different task context. In a functional MRI experiment we manipulated this response recoding process. Subjects were required to execute two simple spatial tasks in a task switching paradigm. In one condition both tasks required the same set of responses, hence each response had two different meanings depending on the relevant task (bivalent condition). In the other condition subjects used a separate set of responses for each task (univalent condition). While subjects were required to recode the meaning when switching from one task to the next in the bivalent condition, response recoding was not required in the univalent condition. We demonstrate that the lateral prefrontal cortex is involved in recoding of response meaning. These results extend previous assumptions on the role of the prefrontal cortex in behavioral control. (C) 2003 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.