Functional division of the prefrontal lobe of the brain: coordinate-based neuroimaging meta-analysis.

The prefrontal cortex (PFC) is known to play a crucial role in the complex process of human cognition such as emotion, memory, value and decision-making, and reward. However, the current functional subregion division is too coarse and the specific localization of clusters related to each task remains unclear. In the study, to clarify the specific role of different clusters in the PFC, a detailed subdivision of the prefrontal cortex was conducted based on evidence from human neuroimaging studies. Based on the predefined inclusion criteria, up to December 2022, a total of 186 studies related to emotion, memory, value decision-making, and reward were screened from the PubMed, Web of Science, and BrainMap functional databases. The Activation Likelihood Estimation (ALE) method was used to divide the prefrontal cortex regions by performing single-activation analysis, contrastive-activation analysis, and joint-activation analysis. The prefrontal brain area was divided into 15 functional sub-areas, each corresponding to unique activation or joint activation areas of emotion, memory, value and decision-making, and reward. The results showed that the prefrontal lobe of the brain plays different roles in the different subregions. The division of the prefrontal lobe has important clinical value for understanding and studying the relevant diseases.