Questioning the role of the frontopolar cortex in multi-component behavior – a TMS/EEG study

Cognitive control is central to many every day situations. There, we usually have to combine different actions to achieve a task goal. Several lines of research indicated that areas in the prefrontal cortex determine cognitive control in situations requiring multi-component behavior. One of this is the frontopolar cortex (FPC). However, direct non-correlative evidence for this notion is widely lacking. In the current study we test the importance of the FPC for the implementation of action cascading processes in a TMS/EEG study. The data, however, clearly show that the FPC does not modulate behavioral or neurophysiological parameters reflecting action cascading, which is in contrast to the findings of dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. The results are supported by a Bayesian analysis of the data. The results suggest that a possible role of the FPC in multi-component behavior needs to be refined. At least in situations, where multi-component behavior is achieved by stopping and switching processes and does not impose high demands on working memory processes the FPC seems to play no role in the implementation of this major cognitive control function.