Frontal Lobe

Prefrontal
 "Executive Functions", such as working memory, decision-making, determine good and
bad, better and best, same and different, future consequences of current activities,
working toward a defined goal, prediction of outcomes, expectation based on actions,
social "control"(the ability to suppress urges that, if not suppressed, could lead to socially-
unacceptable outcomes), planning and judgment.
 Mappings between sensory inputs, thoughts, and actions  Orchestration of thoughts and
actions in accordance with internal goals.
 Planning complex cognitive behaviors,
 Personality expression,
 Moderating correct social behavior.
 Perceiving tones (in rostromedial prefrontal cortex which project to Amigdala) together with
auditory cortex.

Dorsolateral Prefrontal
 Attention and working memory.
 Responsible for motor planning, organization, and regulation. However, DL-PFC is not exclusively
responsible for the executive functions.
 Integration of sensory and mnemonic information
 Regulation of intellectual function and action.
 Working memory
 DLPFC impair short-term memory and cause difficulty inhibiting responses.
Lesions may also eliminate much of the ability to make judgments about what's relevant and
what's not as well as causing problems in organization
 Exhibiting self-control.
 Produce lucid (rational & logical) dreams.

N.B: All complex mental activity requires the additional cortical and subcortical circuits that DL-
PFC is connected with.

Precentral Gyrus
 See “Premotor Cortex”

Superior Frontal Gyrus

  self-awareness, in coordination with the action of the sensory system
 Laughter

Middle Frontal Gyrus

 See “Dorsolateral Prefrontal”

Inferior Frontal Gyrus

 Active in many different language tasks and plays a role in integrating brain regions

Pars orbitalis

 See “Orbitofrontal Area”

Pars Triangularis

 Language/ music comprehension

 Cognitive control of memory
 Involved in a specific type of language processing. Specifically, PT becomes
activated when people read exception words, which are words with atypical
spelling-to-sound relationships
 Involved in deciphering the meaning of words rather than trying to decide what the word
is based on the sound that goes into the ear.
 Semantic encoding, regardless of difficulty of the word being processed. This is consistent
with the theory that pt is involved in semantic processing more than phonological
processing.pt activity went down with repetition

Pars Operculum

 Coordinates the activities of other brain regions.

 See “Broca Area”

Broca Area (area in pars opercularis and pars triangularis)

 Language production
 Decode written language/ music to decipher its pronunciation.
 Involved in various cognitive and perceptual tasks  motor-related processes.
Observation of meaningful hand shadows resembling moving animals activates frontal
 language area, demonstrating that Broca's area plays a role in interpreting action of
others.
An activation of BA 44 was also reported during execution of grasping and manipulation.
 Word and gesture relationship  representation of meaningful arm gestures.

Orbito Frontal Areas

 Cognitive processes
 Decision-making
 Individual variability or personality, because of its functions in emotion and reward.
Involved in "", such as social adjustment and the control of mood, drive and
responsibility, and more recently implicated in drug addiction.
The OFC is considered by some to be a part of the limbic system.
 Sensory integration, in representing the affective value of reinforcers, and in decision-
making and expectation.
 Regulate planning behavior associated with sensitivity to reward and punishment.
 Activated during intuitive logical judgments.

Premotor Cortex
 Planning actions (in concert with the basal ganglia) and refining movements based upon
sensory input (this requires the cerebellum).
 Sensory guidance of movement and control of proximal and trunk muscles of the body.
 Actions that are under external control, such as the performance of a sequence of
movements guided by a visual cue.

Suplementary Motor

 Planning of motor actions and bimanual control.

 In contrast to the premotor cortex, the SMA has been implicated in actions that are
under internal control, such as the performance of a sequence of movements from
memory (as opposed to movements guided by a visual cue).

 Pre-SMA is involved in acquiring new sequences. There is more activity in these neurons
when the sequence is new, compared to when it has been already learned.
  In contrast, SMA are more active when performing a sequence already learned than one
still being learned. This suggests that the SMA may be more involved in retrieving the
sequence.

 Implicated in visuo-motor associations. (???)

 SMA neurons are more active when the task requires the arrangement of multiple
movements in the correct sequence and correct temporal order. For example, some SMA
neurons "prefer" a specific order of movements to be performed. Other SMA neurons
fire more for the preparation of a specific rank order.

 Initiation and control of voluntary movements.

Primary Motor
 Plan and execute movements.
 Neurons (Betz cells)  Axons  Spinal Cord (to synapse onto alpha motor neurons)
 Muscles.
 The posterior: activated by attention without any sensory feedback
- Initiation of movements
The anterior:
- Activated by imaginary finger movements and listening to music/ speech done
without actual movements.
- Areas dependent on sensory feedback.
- Executing movements involving complex sensorimotor interactions.

Anterior Cingulate

 Executive (anterior)
 Evaluative (posterior)

 Cognitive /reward-based decision making and learning (dorsal)

 Emotional (ventral)

 The ACC is connected with the prefrontal cortex and parietal cortex as well as the
motor system and the frontal eye fields making it a central station for processing top-
down and bottom-up stimuli and assigning appropriate control to other areas in the
brain.

 Involved when effort is needed to carry out a task such as in early learning and problem
solving.
 Error detection, anticipation of tasks, motivation, and modulation of emotional
responses to the ACC.

 Adherence to sequential decision-making.

 Rehearsing a task that originally produced spontaneous, novel/ fresh/ innovative/

unique responses to the point of producing rigid, stereotypic/ conventional responses
results in a diminished ACC response.

 Emotional awareness which is associated with improved recognition of emotional cues

or targets.
 Parietal Lobe

Post-central gyrus

 Primary somatosensory cortex - main sensory receptive area is sense of touch.

Posterior Parietal (See “Superior & inferior parietal lobules, and Intraparietal”)

 The lateral intraparietal (LIP) contains a map of neurons representing the saliency
of spatial locations, and attention to these spatial locations. It
can be used by the oculomotor system for targeting eye movements, when
appropriate.
 The ventral intraparietal (VIP) receives input from a number of senses (visual,
somatosensory, auditory, and vestibular).
Neurons with tactile receptive fields represented space in a head-centered
reference frame.
The cells with visual receptive fields also fire with head-centered reference
frames but possibly also with eye-centered coordinates.

 The medial intraparietal (MIP) encode the location of a reach target in eye-
centered coordinates.

 The anterior intraparietal (AIP) contains neurons responsive to shape, size, and
orientation of objects to be grasped as well as for manipulation of hands
themselves, both to viewed and renmembered stimuli.

Superior parietal lobules

 Processing and association cortex (secondary somatosensory cortex/ BA 5)

  Visuo-motor coordination (posterior part/ BA 7)
E.g. in reaching to grasp an object.

Inferior parietal lobules

Supramarginal Gyrus

 As mirror neuron system

 Active in imitation

Angular Gyrus

 Understanding metaphors (language – cognition)

 Corresponding actual position of the body, and the mind's perceived location of
the body.

 Part of temporo-parieto-occipital area.

Intraparietal Sulcus

 Perceptual-motor coordination (for directing eye movements and reaching).

 Visual attention & visuospatial working memory.

 Processing symbolic numerical information.

 Interpreting the intent of others.

Precuneus (medial section of posterior parietal cortex)

 Sensory-based map of one's own body.

 Part of limbic system.

Parietal Operculum

 Activated during somatosensory stimulation

 Texture discrimination tasks

 Motoric tasks involving sensory feedback.

 Tactile learning and memory

  Perform co-ordinate transformations from the somatotopic to other spatial
frames.

Parietal-temporal-occipital

 Assembly of auditory, visual, and somatosensory system information.

 Meaning is assigned to stimuli in the PTO  the limbic and prefrontal
association areas  memory.

Temporal Lobe

Superior Temporal Gyrus

 Primary auditory cortex (on Brodmann areas 41 and 42)

 Auditory sensations (reach perception only if received and processed

by a cortical area)

 Processing sound working together with frontal and parietal.

 Awareness of sound

 Identify the fundamental elements of music, such as pitch (pitch

perception) and loudness.

 Receive and provide input from lower centers and ear

 The secondary auditory cortex

 Processing of “harmonic, melodic and rhythmic patterns.”

  The tertiary auditory cortex supposedly

 Integrates everything into the overall experience of music.

 Processing of speech (on Broadmann 22/ Wernicke area)

 Left side of the brain  generation and understanding of individual

words (language comprehension)  Wernicke area on left side
connected to Broca

 Right side of the brain  helps tell the difference between melody,
pitch, and sound intensity, that is prosody.

Middle Temporal Gyrus

 Auditory processing and language

 Accessing word meaning while reading

 Processes in contemplating distance

 Recognition of known faces

Inferior Temporal Gyrus

 Visual processing (associated with the representation of complex object features,

such as global shape).
 Recognition memory (face perception).

Ventra temporal cortices (underside)

Fusiform Gyrus (medial part of inferior temporal gyrus

 Face and body recognition

 Processing of color information

 Word recognition

 Within-category identification

 Processing of socially salient stimuli (important for social behavior).

  The right fusiform gyrus implicates in the processing of positive emotional
contexts.

Parahippocampal Gyrus

 Encoding and recognition of scenes even (rather than faces or objects) 

contextualizing of visual background
 Memory encoding and retrieval

 Active when human subjects view images of landscapes, cityscapes, or rooms

(i.e. images of "places")

 Right parahippocampal gyrus  identifying social context, including

paralinguistic (non verbal communications) elements of verbal communication.

Occipitotemporal area

 See “Fusiform and Inferior Temporal Gyrus”

Temporopolar Area (anterior end of the temporal lobe, known as the temporal pole)

 Processed perceptual inputs to instictive emotional responses.

Medial Temporal

Hippocampus

 Memory (associative, episodic, declarative and long term memory)

 Spatial navigation/ body orientation.

Amigdala

 processing and memory of emotional reactions

 Insular cortex  structure deep within the lateral sulcus between the temporal lobe
and the parietal lobe

 Perception
 Motor control

 Self-awareness/ sense body ownership

 Cognitive functioning

 Interpersonal experience

 Social emotion (processing of norm violations, emotional processing, empathy,

and orgasms.

 Integration of information relating to bodily states into higher-order cognitive

and emotional processes.
The insula receives information from "homeostatic afferent" sensory pathways
via the thalamus and sends output to a number of other limbic-related
structures, such as the amygdala, the ventral striatum and the orbitofrontal
cortex.

Occipital Lobe
Primary Visual Cortex V 1
  Dorsal stream  associated with motion, representation of object locations, and
control of the eyes and arms, especially when visual information is used to guide
reaching  Action stream  Posterior parietal.
 Ventral stream  associated with form recognition, object representation &
storage of long-term memory  Perception stream  Inferior temporal.

 Very well-defined map of the spatial information in vision

 Spatiotemporal filters  carry out neuronal processing of spatial frequency,

orientation, motion, direction, speed (thus temporal frequency), and many other
spatiotemporal features.

Visual Area V 2

 Receives strong feed forward connections from V1 and sends strong connections
to V3, V4, and V5
 Orientation, spatial frequency, and color.

 Orientation of illusory contours

Visual Complex V 3

 Mutual connections with BA 17 and 18, as well as posterior parietal and inferior
temporal association areas.
 Differentiation point of the two visual streams.
The dorsal region for motion-sensitive neurons - Ventral areas for object
recognition. “See below”

Dorsal V3

 Receiving inputs from V2 and from the primary visual area, and projecting to the
posterior parietal cortex (BA 19).
 Processing of global motion

 Representation of the entire visual field.

Ventral V3

 Weaker connections from the primary visual area, and stronger connections with
the inferior temporal cortex.
 Colour-selective neurons

Visual Area V 4
  Orientation, spatial frequency, and color
 Strong attentional modulation.

 For object recognition of intermediate complexity, like simple geometric shapes.

Visual area V4 is not tuned for complex objects such as faces, as areas in the
inferotemporal cortex are.

 Form recognition

Visual Area V 5/MT (Middle Temporal)

 Perception of motion
 Integrate local visual motion signals into the global motion of complex objects.

 Guidance of eye movements.

 Responding visual information, often in a direction-selective manner.

 Organized in direction columns

Prestriate cortex = Visual V2.

Extrastriate cortex = BA 18, 19/ visual area V2, visual area V3, visual area V4,
& visual area MT.
Striate cortex = BA 17/ Primary Visual Cortex/ Visual V1

Cuneus

 Receives visual information from the contralateral superior retina representing

the inferior visual field.
 Involvement in basic visual processing.

 Projection of striate cortex to extrastriate corticies of pyramidal cells in the

cuneus.

Lingual Gyrus

 Role in dreaming and vision

 Recognizing words, regardless of size, font, etc.

Calcarine Fissure (where the primary visual cortex is concentrated)

 The central visual field is located in posterior portion.

 The peripheral visual field is located in the anterior portion.

 Cortical magnification.