Chapter 9

Fellows, L.K. (2010). Damaged self, damaged control: A component process analysis of the effects of frontal lobe damage on human decision making. In R.R. Hassin, K.N. Ochsner & Y. Trope (Eds.), Self Control in Society, Mind, and Brain, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
This chapter looks at the effects of frontal lobe damage on decision making; however, the focus is on self-control, exploring why a model suggesting 'top-down' control over 'instinctive/impulsive' behaviour is unsatisfactory, an issue not addressed in the current chapter.

Fuster, J. M. (2015). The Prefrontal Cortex, 5th Edn. New York: Academic Press.
This is the essential reference on the prefrontal cortex. The book synthesizes thecurrent scientific knowledge on the topic, both for humans and animals. It includes an extensive discussion of theprefrontal functions and how they are affected by brain damage.

Goldberg, E. (2009). The New Executive Brain. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
This is not a textbook and so provides an easy to read introduction to the different executive functions the frontal lobes perform.

Levine, B., Turner, G.R. and Stuss, D.T. (2008). Rehabilitation of frontal lobe functions. In D.T. Stuss, G. Winocur & I.H. Robertson (Eds.), Cognitive Neurorehabilitation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
This chapter provides an accessible overview of the effects of frontal lobe damage and extends the current chapter by looking at rehabilitation.

Szczepanski, S. M., & Knight, R. T. (2014). Insights into human behavior from lesions to the prefrontal cortex. Neuron, 83, 1002-1018.
This article discusses how damage to the prefrontal cortex impairs cognitive and non-cognitive functionsin both humans and non-human primates.

Glossary

Disinhibition Impaired response inhibition, an inability to suppress previous incorrect responses observed in patients with frontal lobe epilepsy.

Executive functions Meta-abilities necessary for appropriate social functioning and everyday problem-solving, for example the deployment of attention, self-regulation, insight, planning and goal-directed behaviour.

Perseveration An inability to shift response strategy characteristic of frontal lobe patients.

Supervisory attentional system A term used by Norman and Shallice to describe a system that can heighten a schema’s level of activation, allowing it to be in a better position to compete with other schemas for dominance and thus increasing its probability of being selected in contention scheduling.

Summary

Executive functions encompass the deployment of attention, the initiation of non-habitual action, goal-directed behaviour, planning, insight, foresight and self-regulation, and hence processes that are associated with problem-solving, an operational definition of thinking.
Frontal lobe damage can affect performance on a wide range of tasks that are thought to tap executive functions.
Case histories show that frontal damage may also result in changes to personality and affective behaviour.
Neuropsychological studies have shown that impairments in the deployment of attention, in abstract and conceptual thinking and in strategy formation can follow frontal lobe damage, and these processes are important for successful problem solving.
Findings suggest that laboratory tests may not be suitable for tapping those social problem-solving activities that frontal patients find difficult to perform in everyday life.
Norman and Shallice have provided a theory of frontal lobe function that specifies damage to the central executive of working memory; however, alternative accounts have identified weakening memory associations and an overlap with fluid intelligence.
The executive functions appear separable but they also seem to share some underlying commonality.
Research in this area is problematic, partly because many tests of executive functions are complex tasks which make demands on a variety of cognitive skills.

Weblinks

‘What Really Happened to Phineas Gage?’ Educational video on what Phineas Gage taught us about dysfunction of the frontal lobes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOkISlxST38

Wisconsin Card Sorting Task demo
https://www.psytoolkit.org/experiment-library/experiment_wcst.html

Animated solutions to the Matchstick Test
http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~cfs/305_html/Gestalt/MatchStickProbs/FourSquares_inf.html