Conference on Cognitive Computational Neuroscience

The prefrontal cortex (PFC) is organized hierarchically along a posterior-to-anterior axis. This theoretical framework has been studied mostly using visual stimuli. Here, we investigated this functional organization of the PFC, particularly using multiple sensory information with multivoxel pattern analysis (MVPA) and functional connectivity (FC). We used two different sensory modalities—auditory cues and visual targets—to establish different levels of hierarchical processing. We found that the posterior-to-anterior pattern of activations along the precentral gyrus (PreCG), inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), and middle frontal gyrus (MFG) was observed as the level of hierarchy increased. Furthermore, MVPA results showed that the more anterior regions specifically encoded information for higher-level processing. More interestingly, sensory areas had stronger FC with the posterior region of the PFC than the anterior region. We suggest that the PFC is functionally associated with sensory modality showing posterior-to-anterior gradient system.