Anterior Prefrontal Contributions to Implicit Attention Control

Prefrontal cortex function has traditionally been associated with explicit executive function. Recently, however, evidence has been presented that lateral prefrontal cortex is also involved in high-level cognitive processes such as task set selection or inhibition in the absence of awareness. Here, we discuss evidence that not only lateral prefrontal cortex, but also rostral prefrontal cortex is involved in such kinds of implicit control processes. Specifically, rostral prefrontal cortex activation changes have been observed when implicitly learned spatial contingencies in a search display become invalid, requiring a change of attentional settings for optimal guidance of visual search.