Chapter 1 - THE FRONTAL LOBES AND THE REGULATION OF BEHAVIOR

Abstract

Publisher Summary The frontal lobes play a most important role in human mental activity. Frontal lobe lesions lead to disturbances of conscious behavior. The formal intellect of those patients may remain relatively intact, but they are unable to properly interact with their cultural environment. The delicate components of their mental activity are lost, their critical faculties are violated, and they become spontaneous. Their ability to work out programs of proper behavior, as it were, becomes lost. Specific features of activity of the human frontal lobes may best be investigated under conditions where the patient must fulfill some special task. It is important to study the changes that develop in the frontal lobes of the brain during mental exercise. Electrophysiological methods have been used, along with other methods, to determine the exact nature of that difficulty in mental activity. This chapter discusses the comparison of records of normal subjects and of patients with a delusional form of schizophrenia subjected to special tasks. Mental strain is of particular importance there. When the frontal lobes become nonfunctional, mental activity markedly slows down. The functional state of the cortical frontal lobes and their participation in mental activity are to a considerable degree determined by the corticosubcortical correlations and, above all, by influences exerted by the reticular formation of the midbrain.