The medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) has been posited to serve a variety of social, affective, and cognitive functions. These conclusions have largely been driven by forward inference analyses (e.g. GLM fMRI studies and meta-analyses) that indicate where domain-specific tasks tend to produce activity but tell us little about what those regions do. Here, we take a multi-method, multi-domain approach to the functionality of MPFC subdivisions within Brodmann areas 9-11. We consider four methods that each have reverse inference or causal inference value: lesion work, transcranial magnetic stimulation, multivariate pattern analysis, and Neurosynth analyses. The Neurosynth analyses include multi-term reverse inference analyses that compare several domains of interest to one another at once. We examine the evidence supporting structure-function links in five domains: social cognition, self, value, emotional experience, and mental time travel. The evidence is considered for each of three MPFC subdivisions: dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (DMPFC), anteromedial prefrontal cortex (AMPFC), and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC). Although there is evidentiary variability across methods, the results suggest that social processes are functionally linked to DMPFC (and somewhat surprisingly in VMPFC), self processes are linked to AMPFC, and affective processes are linked to AMPFC and VMPFC. There is also a relatively non-selective region of VMPFC that may support situational processing, a process key to each domain, but also independent of each.

内侧前额叶皮层（MPFC）已被假定具有多种社交，情感和认知功能。这些结论很大程度上是由前向推理分析（例如，GLM fMRI研究和荟萃分析）得出的，这些分析表明特定领域的任务倾向于在何处产生活性，但对这些区域的作用知之甚少。在这里，我们采用多方法，多域的方法来解决Brodmann区域9-11中MPFC细分的功能。我们考虑四种具有反向推断或因果推断价值的方法：病变工作，经颅磁刺激，多元模式分析和Neurosynth分析。Neurosynth分析包括长期反向推理分析，该分析可以一次将多个感兴趣的域相互比较。社会认知，自我，价值，情感经历和精神时间旅行。对于三个MPFC细分中的每个细分均考虑证据：背侧前额叶皮层（DMPFC），内侧前额叶皮层（AMPFC）和腹侧前额叶皮层（VMPFC）。尽管各种方法在证据上存在差异，但结果表明，社会过程在功能上与DMPFC相关（在VMPFC中有些令人惊讶），自我过程与AMPFC相关，而情感过程与AMPFC和VMPFC相关。VMPFC还有一个相对非选择性的区域，可以支持情境处理，这是每个域的过程键，但也可以彼此独立。