The Riddle of Frontal Lobe Function in Man (Reprinted from The frontal granular cortex and behavior, pg 410, 1964)

摘要

This paper records a recurrent perplexity and a recent attempt at its resolution. Let me begin with the perplexity. Man_s frontal lobes have always presented problems that seemed to exceed those encountered in studying other regions of his brain. In striving to give a functional interpretation of anatomic pattern, we have therefore tended, in our laboratory, to begin by considering the occipital lobes and their processing of visual information (Teuber and Bender 1949; Teuber et al. 1960), and to progress from there to analysis of parietal and temporal lobe syndromes involving touch and hearing and higher processes (Teuber et al. 1951; Semmes et al. 1960). In this way, one can spend one’s life as an investigator without ever crossing the central fissure. And well one might—because it appears that by starting at the posterior end of the brain, it may become impossible in principle to reach the frontal lobes.