Prefrontal contributions to the executive control of visuospatial working memory across primate species

The ability to gain volitional control over our thoughts and actions to perform goal directed behaviors is largely owed to working memory (WM). WM is a highly distributed process requiring multiple integrated brain regions. The brain regions employed in WM are in part dependent on the sensory input to be remembered. For instance, visual and posterior parietal areas are critical for spatial WM. However, the prefrontal cortex (PFC) appears to be the node at which all of these brain regions converge on in WM, regardless of the sensory input. Understanding how the PFC has evolved to mediate spatial WM across primate species creates a powerful gateway to providing translational insight into human WM processing. This mini-review will discuss three key neuroanatomical regions of the PFC thought to be involved in the executive control of spatial WM - the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC), and the frontal eye fields (FEF). In particular, the review will focus on comparison of these regions between humans, macaques, and marmosets to determine the reliability of studying these WM brain regions across species.