Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 36 (2012) 479–501 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews jou rnal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/neubiorev Review Anatomical insights into the interaction of emotion and cognition in the prefrontal cortex a b,c,∗ Rebecca D. Ray , David H. Zald a Department of Psychiatry, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 6001 Research Park Boulevard, Madison, WI 53711, United States b Department of Psychology, Vanderbilt University, United States c Department of Psychiatry, Vanderbilt University, United States a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t Article history: Psychological research increasingly indicates that emotional processes interact with other aspects of Received 12 December 2010 cognition. Studies have demonstrated both the ability of emotional stimuli to influence a broad range Received in revised form 16 August 2011 of cognitive operations, and the ability of humans to use top-down cognitive control mechanisms to Accepted 17 August 2011 regulate emotional responses. Portions of the prefrontal cortex appear to play a significant role in these interactions. However, the manner in which these interactions are implemented remains only partially Keywords: elucidated. In the present review we describe the anatomical connections between ventral and dorsal Dorsolateral prefrontal areas as well as their connections with limbic regions. Only a subset of prefrontal areas are Ventrolateral Orbitofrontal likely to directly influence amygdalar processing, and as such models of prefrontal control of emotions and models of emotional regulation should be constrained to plausible pathways of influence. We also Functional connectivity Emotion regulation focus on how the specific pattern of feedforward and feedback connections between these regions may Attention dictate the nature of information flow between ventral and dorsal prefrontal areas and the amygdala. Working memory These patterns of connections are inconsistent with several commonly expressed assumptions about the nature of communications between emotion and cognition. © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Contents 1. Introduction . 480 2. Topography and cytoarchitectural features of the PFC . 480 2.1.1. Topography . 480 2.2. Phylogeny and cytoarchitecture. 480 2.3. Cytoarchitecture in humans . 481 3. Connections . 482 3.1. Amygdalar input to PFC . 482 3.2. Prefrontal output to the amygdala . 482 3.3. Prefrontal projections to the hypothalamus and brainstem . 484 3.4. Connections within the frontal lobe. 484 3.5. Prefrontal network connections dictate pathways to the amygdala . 484 4. The structural model . 485 4.1. Laminar patterns and intrinsic prefrontal connections . 486 4.2. Laminar patterns of prefrontal–amygdalar connections. 487 5. Emotion regulation . 487 5.1. Correlational studies of amygdala deactivation . 492 5.2. Models of emotion regulation . 492 6. Cognitive control of emotional distraction . 494 6.1. Suppression of emotional stimuli during cognitive tasks . 495 6.2. Working memory . 495 ∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 615 343 6076; fax: +1 615 343 8449. E-mail address: [email protected] (D.H. Zald). 0149-7634/$ – see front matter © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2011.08.005 480 R.D. Ray, D.H. Zald / Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 36 (2012) 479–501 7. Affective regulation of cognitive areas . 496 8. Discussion . 497 8.1. Insights for emotion regulation . 497 8.2. Insights on the directionality of influences . 497 8.3. Limitations in inferring function from structure . 497 8.4. Modeling of feedforward and feedback connections . 498 8.5. Direct tests of influence . 498 Acknowledgements . 498 References . ..