The New Executive Brain: Frontal Lobes in a Complex World

Storage and executive processes in the frontal lobes.

The human frontal cortex helps mediate working memory, a system that is used for temporary storage and manipulation of information and that is involved in many higher cognitive functions. Working memory includes two components: short-term storage (on the order of seconds) and executive processes that operate on the contents of storage. Recently, these two components have been investigated in fu...

Fractionating the Central Executive Book : The Frontal Lobes 1

Functions of the frontal lobes: relation to executive functions.

Proceeding from the assumptions that specific frontal regions control discrete functions and that very basic cognitive processes can be systematically manipulated to reveal those functions, recent reports have demonstrated consistent anatomical/functional relationships: dorsomedial for energization, left dorsolateral for task setting, and right dorsolateral for monitoring. There is no central e...

Executive control of gaze by the frontal lobes.

Executive control requires controlling the initiation of movements, judging the consequences of actions, and adjusting performance accordingly. We have investigated the role of different areas in the frontal lobe in executive control expressed by macaque monkeys performing a saccade stop signal task. Certain neurons in the frontal eye field respond to visual stimuli, and others control the prod...

Brain and Intelligence: A Quantitative study of the frontal lobes

Although this book is difficult to read and even more difficult to review, it represents a remarkable amount of work in a difficult field, yet it may be that the semantic difficulties imposed added to a tendency toward obscure writing will greatly restrict the influence of the book. Mr. Halstead has gathered together a battery of tests, most of which he devised himself, which appear to be neuro...