Chapter 16 The Frontal Lobes and Networks

16.1 Frontal-Lobe Anatomy

Frontal lobe constantly involved in: (from slides)
- Executive function (planning, organisation, and execution of more or less complex action)
- Assessing internal and external stimuli in behavioral control
- Keeping track of what happened and what is to come, relying on focused and selective attention
Frontal lobes therefore has strong control over automatic, spontaneous reactions; impulse control

Subdivisions of the Frontal Cortex

4 Distinct Regions of Frontal Cortex: Primary motor, premotor,
prefrontal, and anterior cingulate

Primary motor cortex (motor) (from slides)

o Controls motor neurons in brainstem and
spinal cord
o Influence on control also from premotor
cortex, which sends motor signals to
brainstem and spinal cord itself

Premotor cortex (motor) (from slides)

o Also includes supplementary motor area,
frontal eye fields and Broca’s area
o Receives information from posterior parietal cortex and DLPFC for planning and guidance of eye and
limb movement

Prefrontal cortex (from slides)

- DLPFC (non-motor) (from slides)
o DLPFC: reciprocal connections with posterior parietal
cortex (visual dorsal stream) and STS, as well as motor
areas
o Keeps track of what happened, where it happened, and
in which order (temporal memory/ working memory)
o DLPFC relies on information from posterior cortex areas
about
▪ Executed movements; information from
(parietal) dorsal stream
▪ Objects in environment; information from
(temporal) ventral stream
o DLPFC engaged in selecting behavior based on
temporal/working memory
- Orbitofrontal cortex (non-motor) (from slides)
o Receives majority of information from temporal lobe
▪ Auditory area (superior temporal gyrus)
▪ Visual ventral stream (inferior temporal gyrus)
▪ Polymodal area (STS)
▪ Amygdala
o OFC selects behavior based on assessment between internal (eg. past negative or positive
experiences, learned norms and rules regarding behavior) and external stimuli. Relies on:
▪ Information from temporal cortex (STS) and amygdala regarding social and affective valence
of stimuli (external)
▪ Your personal reference (life goals, experiences – internal)
o OFC important for context-related decision making and moral behavior
▪ Eg. blunted activity to goal-related tasks in addiction
▪ Eg. fronto-orbital lesions: problems adapting behavior to social context (following personal
rules and moral norms)
- Ventromedial PFC: receives major input from medial temporal area and olfactory system (from slides)
 o Reciprocal connections with amygdala: controlling emotional and social behavior (cognitive
evaluation: eg. is fear justified in this situation?)
o Projects towards hypothalamus (control over autonomic physiological responses like blood pressure,
heart rate, breathing -> important in emotional reactions), and brainstem (for emotional fight-flight
responses)
o Functions involve inhibition, control of emotional responses and decision making, eg. phobia vs
generalised anxiety disorder

Medial frontal cortex: range of sensorimotor, cognitive, and

affective processes (from slides)
- Posterior zone: motor functions
- Middle zone: cognitive control, pain, affect
- Anterior zone: default mode network -> reward,
social processing, episodic memory

Anterior Cingulate Cortex

- Three distinct functional zones of cingulate cortex:
anterior (ACC; emotion), middle (MCC; response
selection and feedback-guied decision making), and
posterior (PCC; visual spatial orientation and
assessment of self-relevance of objects and events)
- Divided into two subregions: dorsal (cognitive) and ventral (emotional)
- Dorsal region: part of DMN, connections with PFC and posterior parietal cortex and frontal eye fields
- Ventral region: more connected with amygdala, nucleus accumbens, hypothalamus, hippocampus, and
anterior insula

Frontal-Lobe Networks
- Salience network: Most active when there are external (environmental) stimuli and behavior change is
needed
- DMN more active when people have internal focus of attention
- Shift in attention from internally directed thought to behavior guided by external events -> increased activity
in salience network and decreased activity in DMN; if salience network not functioning properly, DMN has
excessive activity leading to lapse in attention

16.2 A Theory of Frontal-Lobe Function

Functions of the Motor Cortex and Premotor Cortex
- Primary motor executes elementary movments (hand/arm motions to pick up object)
- Premotor selects coordinated action sequences (to help us walk down the street eg.)
- Must also select eye movements (eg. they direct our hands to objects which want, which is function of
frontal eye fields) that can be made to specific visible targets, or can be made on basis of internal cues
- Motor acts are paced by cues and can become associated with cues, eg. need to know that red means stop
and green means go when driving

Functions of the Prefrontal Cortex

- Internal cues:
o Use temporal memory: a neural record of recent events and their order; events related to things or
movements and derive information from object-recognition (ventral) or motor (dorsal) streams of
sensory processing
- External cues:
o Behavior controlled by external cues and not by internalised knowledge
o Environmental cue
o Orbitofrontal cortex central to learning by association
- Context cues:
o Social context
o Affective content from amygdala
- Autonoetic awareness:
 o Self-knowledge, or awareness of one’s self
o Impairment results in deficit of behavioral self-regulation

Heterogeneity of Frontal-Lobe Function

16.3 Executive Functions of the Frontal-Lobe Networks

Executive function: the ability to perform novel actions; cognitive
processes (attentional control, planning, reasoning, working memory,
problem solving, abstract thinking, self-monitoring, etc.)
- Lateralisation of executive functions; eg. left frontal lobe for task
setting, right frontal lobe for task monitoring
- Distinction in cognitive functions related to DLPFC and emotional
functions related to vmPFC and orbitofrontal regions
o DLPFC: cognitive; “cool executive functions”; working
memory, sustained attention, problem solving (from slides)
o Orbitofrontal cortex and Ventromedial PFC: emotion,
motivation; “hot executive functions”; evaluation of stimuli
depending on value (positive/negative) and reward (from
slides)

16.4 Symptoms of Frontal-Lobe Lesions

Asymmetry in Frontal Lobe Functions (in slides but not in TB)
- Asymmetry of frontal lobe functions is less pronounced than asymmetry in temporal or parietal lobe. Also,
frontal lobe asymmetry is hard to assess due to involvement in almost every form of behavior (from slides)

- Note: asymmetry in affective functions are way more complex in real life (from slides)
- Different frontal areas (DLPFC, OFC, anterior cingulate gyrus) are active simultaneously within frontal
network (from slides)

Disturbances of Motor Function

- Symptoms of unilateral frontal lobe lesions; motor disorders: (from slides)
o Primary motor cortex lesion: loss of precision and speed of fine hand and speech movements, and
loss of force of limb movements
▪ Due to loss of direct corticospinal projections onto motor neurons
o Premotor lesions: problems with performing movement sequences (inclusive speech)
▪ However, fast recovery due to compensation by contralateral hemisphere (due to bilateral
premotor influences on motor behavior)
o Problems with reproducing series of movements in correct order, especially with facial movements
▪ Occurs particularly following dorsolateral prefrontal lesions (problems with working
memory)
o Decline in spontaneous facial expressions and other types of expressive motor behavior
o Difficulties with control of gaze direction; problems with visual search tasks (probably damage of
frontal eye fields)
o Corollary discharge, or reafference, is a neural signal that movement will happen that is generated
when you move your eyes, and the world stays still
 ▪ Signal from frontal lobe to parietal and temporal association cortex presets sensory system
to anticipate the motor act; hence sensory system can interpret changes in external world
with information of voluntary movement
▪ Keeps external world stable, even when eg. running
▪ Frontal-lobe lesion disturbs movement production and interferes with message sent to brain
that movement is taking place
o Difficulties with speech and/or generating words or sentences (lesion Broca’s area/ supplementary
motor area)

Loss of Divergent Thinking

Problems with divergent thinking (as opposed to
convergent thinking: that there is one correct answer
to each question) and planning: (from slides)
- Behavioral Spontaneity:
o Lack of spontaneous language
production (low output, rule breaking,
shaky script, perseveration (repetition
of word/phrase), word fluency, verbal
fluence; particularly with L-sided
lesions)
- Lack of other spontaneous expressions of
cognitive activity (design fluency; especially
with R-sided lesions)
- Lack of initiative and concentration in acting
and thinking; lack of creativity
- Concentration problems; being quickly diverted
- Strategy formation: Lack of new strategies to resolve problems

Environmental Control of Behavior

Poor adaptation of behavior to use cues or signals from environment to regulate
or change behavior; learning problems (from slides)
- Perseveration in responding, acting, and thinking with changing
environmental conditions (eg. Wisconsin Card-Sorting task) ->
frontal lobe necessary for behavioral flexibility
- Loss of response inhibition (eg. stroop test), signs of disinhibition
o Unable to inhibit reading the words
- Not following rules, taking more risk
o Disregarding signal, continuing on incorrect path -> similar
to inability to mobidy responses in card-sorting task
- Disturbances of episodic memory (memory of personal events and
experiences; CH 18)
o Due to loss of autonoetic awareness -> also have deficits in
regulating behavior in unstructured situations
 - Problems with associative learning (selecting of appropriate response to a certain stimulus)

Poor Temporal Memory

Problems with working memory for: (from slides)
- Identity of objects (what, which?)
- Location objects and events (where?)
- Temporal order of events (earlier, later?)
With L-sided dominance for verbal material and R-sided dominance for non-verbal material

Studying temporal memory in humans:

- Recency memory: order in which things have
happened
- Left frontal lobe important for verbal recency; right
frontal lobe important for nonverbal, pictorial,
recency memory

Impaired Social and Sexual Behavior

Altered social behavior and personality include: (from slides)
- Difficulty understanding meaning of facial expressions
- Unpredictable, defiant, moody behavior
- Pseudo-psychopathy: primitive behavior, lack of tact and manners, (sexual) disinhibition (relation with R-
sided lesions; lack of avoidant behavior)
- Pseudo-depressive behavior: apathy; lack of initiative, indifference (relation with L-sided lesions; lack of
approaching behavior)
- Orbitofrontal lesions: abnormal sexual behavior through reduced inhibitions
- Dorsolateral lesions: reduce interest in sexual behavior, but still capable of necessary motor acts and perform
sexually if led step by step
- Deficit in perception of facial expression of humans: possibly related to loss of cells that code facial
expression (eg. cells in superior temporal sulcus)

Example: frontotemporal dementia (from slides)

- Degenerative brain disease: atrophy of frontal and temporal lobes
- Onset most often between 40-60y/o
- Different symptoms: behavior, language, motoric

Does a Spatial Deficit Exist?

- dlPFC role in spatial thinking -> increase in blood flow to dlPFC during spatially guided behaviors
- Blood-flow and lesions -> suggest that frontal lobe participates in selecting among different visual locations

Clinical Neuropsychological Assessment of Frontal-Lobe Damage

- Response inhibition: Wisconsin card sorting test, stroop test
- Verbal fluency: Thurstone word fluency test
o Say as many words beginning with a given letter, etc.
o Lesion in PFC perform poorly
- Nonverbal fluency: design fluency test
o Draw as many unnameable, abstract drawings as possible
 o Lesion in frontal lobe draw few or nameable objects; most often R-sided lesion
- Motor: hand dynamometry, finger tapping, sequencing
- Language comprehension: token test, phonetic discrimination
- Working (temporal) memory: self-ordering
- Planning: tower of London
- Executive functions: BRIEF

16.5 Intelligence and the Frontal Lobes

- g factor: general factor that contributes to all cognitive activity

- Best tests of g involve:
o Problem-solving tasks (engages fluid intelligence: the ability to see abstract relationships and draw
logical inferences)
o Crystallised intelligence: ability to retain and use knowledge acquired through prior learning and
experience, closely related to Wechsler IQ score
- Parieto-Frontal Integration Theory of Intelligence (P-FIT): a network formed by white matter tracts that
connect the posterior parietal and prefrontal regions, underlying intelligence