NEURAL SYSTEMS ENGAGED BY PLANNING - A PET STUDY OF THE TOWER-OF-LONDON TASK

The functional anatomy of planning was investigated using the Tower of London task. Activation was observed in a distributed network of cort ical areas incorporating prefrontal, cingulate, premotor, parietal and occipital cortices. Activation in corresponding areas has been observ ed in visuospatial working memory tasks with the exception of the rost ral prefrontal cortex. This area may be identified with the executive components of planning comprising response selection and evaluation. E nhanced neural activity in both this rostral prefrontal area and the v isuospatial working memory system was associated with increased task d ifficulty. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd.