Is There “One ” DLPFC in Cognitive Action Control? Evidence for Heterogeneity From Co-Activation-Based Parcellation

The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) has consistently been implicated in cognitive control of motor behavior. There is, however, considerable variability in the exact location and extension of these activations across functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiments. This poses the question of whether this variability re-flects sampling error and spatial uncertainty in fMRI experiments or structural and functional heterogeneity of this region. This study shows that the right DLPFC as observed in 4 different experiments tapping executive action control may be subdivided into 2 distinct subregions-an anterior-ventral and a posterior-dorsal one- based on their whole-brain co-activation patterns across neuroimaging studies. Investigation of task-dependent and task-independent con-nectivity revealed both clusters to be involved in distinct neural net-works. The posterior subregion showed increased connectivity with bilateral intraparietal sulci, whereas the anterior subregio