THE PROBLEM OF THE FRONTAL LOBE: A REINTERPRETATION

This chapter discusses the problem of the frontal lobe, where the notion that this part of the brain is crucially involved in man's highest mental faculties and the conclusion that the only defects objectively demonstrable in frontal-lobe patients are of a perceptual nature are discussed.

Abstract

This chapter discusses the problem of the frontal lobe. As a result of the complexity of frontal lobe, the concepts concerning the function of man's frontal lobes range between two widely separate extremes. On the one hand, there is the notion that this part of the brain is crucially involved in man's highest mental faculties and on the other extreme, there is the conclusion that the only defects objectively demonstrable in frontal-lobe patients are of a perceptual nature. The wide divergence between these two views may be attributable in part at least to the common difficulty of determining clinically the precise extent and location of the cerebral tissue damage in human patients. The problems encountered in exploring these modality specific cortical fields are likely to be multiplied many times over in regions such as the frontal cortex, which are certain to be associated with more than one sensory modality. The problem of identifying the natural stimuli consistently capable of eliciting responses by a sufficiently large number of cortical units in such regions might prove quite elusive.