Influential theories of Medial Frontal Cortex (MFC) function suggest that the MFC registers cognitive conflict as an aversive signal, but no study directly tested this idea. Instead, recent studies suggested that nonoverlapping regions in the MFC process conflict and affect. In this preregistered human fMRI study (male and female), we used MVPAs to identify which regions respond similarly to conflict and aversive signals. The results reveal that, of all conflict- and value-related regions, only the ventral pre-supplementary motor area (or dorsal anterior cingulate cortex) showed a shared neural pattern response to different conflict and affect tasks. These findings challenge recent conclusions that conflict and affect are processed independently, and provide support for integrative views of MFC function.

SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Multiple theories propose that the MFC, and the dorsal ACC in particular, integrates information related to suboptimal outcomes from different psychological domains (e.g., cognitive control and negative affect) with the aim of adaptively steering behavior. In contrast to recent studies in the field, we provide evidence for the idea that cognitive control and negative affect are integrated in the MFC by showing that a classification algorithm trained on discerning cognitive control (conflict vs no conflict) can predict affect (negative vs positive) in the voxel pattern response of the dorsal ACC/pre-SMA.

内侧额叶皮质（MFC）功能的影响理论表明，MFC将认知冲突记录为一种厌恶信号，但尚无研究直接验证该想法。取而代之的是，最近的研究表明，MFC过程中的非重叠区域会发生冲突和影响。在这项预先注册的人类fMRI研究中（男性和女性），我们使用MVPA来识别哪些区域对冲突和厌恶信号的反应相似。结果表明，在所有与冲突和价值有关的区域中，只有腹前补充运动区（或前扣带回皮质）对不同的冲突和影响任务表现出共享的神经模式反应。这些发现挑战了冲突和影响是独立处理的最新结论，并为MFC功能的集成视图提供了支持。

意义声明多种理论认为，MFC（尤其是背侧ACC）整合了与来自不同心理领域（例如，认知控制和负面影响）的次优结果相关的信息，目的是自适应地指导行为。与该领域的最新研究形成对比，我们通过证明通过对识别性认知控制（冲突与无冲突）进行训练的分类算法可以预测情感（负面与正面），为MFC中整合了认知控制和负面影响这一观点提供了证据。 ）在背ACC / pre-SMA的体素模式响应中。