Prefrontal Cortex and Behavior: Encoding of Self‐Movement in Dorsal Prefrontal Neurons

Summary: The prefrontal cortex is a heterogeneous structure consisting of several distinct areas, each with its own function. We examined a single unit activity of the dorsal prefrontal cortex during the performance of a delayed conditional discrimination task in which animals were required to discriminate between push‐3 and push‐12 and had to move the stick left or right depending on whether they pushed 3 or 12 times before the delay period. Many neurons in the dorsal prefrontal area showed activity changes related to the encoding of self‐movement information. These findings indicate that the dorsal prefrontal area participates in the processing of self‐movement information.