“…This is consistent with a role for this area in endogenous maintenance of task rules/ goals in advance of task execution (Sakai & Passingham, 2003;MacDonald et al, 2000;Konishi, Kawazua, et al, 1999). Other studies have claimed a role for ventrolateral frontal regions in the suppression of automatically cued motor responses under conditions of task/rule conflict (Aron, Monsell, Sahakian, & Robbins, 2004;Swainson et al, 2003;Konishi, Nakajima, et al, 1999), as well as the learning of arbitrary mappings between visual stimuli and motor actions (Passingham, Toni, & Rushworth, 2000). All of these functions are compatible with a more general role for the lateral prefrontal cortex as a working University of Exeter, Exeter, UK memory buffer, within which the neural representation of current task rules are maintained and updated (Owen, 2000;D'Esposito et al, 1998) Task switching studies typically also reveal activity in areas of the medial prefrontal cortex, including the anterior cingulate gyrus.…”