<p>The functional organization of human medial
frontal cortex (MFC) is a subject of intense study. Using functional magnetic resonance
imaging (fMRI), the MFC has been associated with diverse psychological
processes including motor function, cognitive control, affect, and social
cognition. However, there have been few large-scale efforts to comprehensively
map specific psychological functions to sub-regions of medial frontal anatomy. Here
we applied a meta-analytic data-driven approach to nearly 10,000 fMRI studies to
identify putatively separable regions of MFC and determine which psychological states
preferentially recruit their activation. We identified regions at several
spatial scales on the basis of meta-analytic co-activation, revealing three
broad functional zones along a rostro-caudal axis composed of 2-4 smaller
sub-regions each. Multivariate classification analyses aimed at identifying the
psychological functions most strongly predictive of activity in each region
revealed a tripartite division within MFC, with each zone displaying a
relatively distinct functional signature. The posterior zone was associated preferentially
with motor function, the middle zone with cognitive control, pain, and affect,
and the anterior with reward, social processing and episodic memory. Within
each zone, the more fine-grained sub-regions showed distinct, but subtler, variations
in psychological function. These results
provide hypotheses about the functional organization of medial prefrontal
cortex that can be tested explicitly in future studies.</p