Convergent evidence highlights the differential contributions of various regions of the
prefrontal cortex in the service of cognitive control, but little is understood about how the …

A core component of cognitive control–the ability to regulate thoughts and actions in
accordance with internally represented behavioral goals–might be its intrinsic variability. In …

Adaptive goal-directed behavior involves monitoring of ongoing actions and performance
outcomes, and subsequent adjustments of behavior and learning. We evaluate new findings …

Humans exhibit a remarkable capacity for flexible thought and action. Despite changing
internal needs and external context, individuals maintain stable goals and pursue …

Cognitive control (with the closely related concepts of attention control and executive
function) encompasses the collection of processes that are involved in generating and …

The prefrontal cortex exerts top-down influences on several aspects of higher-order
cognition by functioning as a filtering mechanism that biases bottom-up sensory information …

The functional neuroanatomy of tasks that recruit different forms of response selection and
inhibition has to our knowledge, never been directly addressed in a single fMRI study using …

Cognitive control refers to the ability to perform task-relevant processing in the face of other
distractions or other forms of interference, in the absence of strong environmental support. It …

Cognitive control mechanisms support the deliberate regulation of thought and behavior
based on current goals. Recent work suggests that motivational incentives improve cognitive …

Highlights•Probabilistic reasoning accounts for executive control in the PFC.•Premotor and
OFC regions subserve action selection in stable environments.•vmPFC & dmPFC infer when …