Executive Function Flashcards
Executive Functions
The cognitive processes that allow an individual to engage successfully in independent behaviour and adapt to their environment. Processes include attention, planning, decision making and personality.
Prefrontal Cortex and Executive Function
PFC receives information from sensory areas, the hippocampus, the limbic system and thalamic nuclei. It sends information to sensory systems (to direct attention), basal ganglia and motor cortex (to initiate, continue or inhibit movement) and the limbic system (to influence emotions).
Dorsolateral PFC Syndrome
Results in impaired attention, apathy, lack of insight, impaired working memory, loss of temporal integration, perseveration, impaired planning and depressed mood.
Orbital PFC Syndrome
Results in disinhibition, impulsivity, hyperactivity, imitation, disregard for social conventions, impaired attention and lack of insight.
Medial PFC Syndrome
Results in impaired attention and motility, impaired motor control, apathy and hypo or akinesia. Rarely occurs in isolation due to its position in the PFC.
PFC and Memory
Secondary memory deficits occur due to lack of attention (cannot encode or filter information). Impaired temporal (time), source and meta memory.
PFC and Attention
Impaired selective and exclusionary attention. This results in memory deficits and slowed processing speed.
PFC and Abstract Thought
Those with PFC damage tend to interpret abstract propositions literally and have deficits to mental flexibility and inferential reasoning.
PFC and Social Behaviour
PFC directs attention, provides social context and monitors/changes behaviour. Damage results in impaired social behaviour, imitation and utilisation because the individual has no internal cues to guide behaviour.
Utilisation
Exaggerated dependence on environmental cues to guide behaviour.
Imitation
Propensity to imitate the behaviour of others in order to establish how to act in a given situation.
PFC and Social Mediation
People with PFC damage display socially inappropriate behaviour and are unable to make and sustain plans to monitor or change (mediate) their behaviour.
Damasio (1994)
We use bodily sensations to narrow down options for behaviour then attach emotional consequences to these options which guide our behaviour. Those with PFC damage are unable to link emotion to the consequences of their actions.
PFC and Goal Directed Behaviour
Damage to the PFC results in an inability to formulate and sustain a coherent plan of action. This occurs because of working memory deficits, failure to track subgoals and failure to link memory with emotional consequences.
SAS Model
We use two systems to determine actions:
Contention Scheduling - passive, schema based system, either one option wins or inaction results.
Supervisory Attentional System - active, favours one schema over another. Used when dealing with new situations, fixing errors or inhibiting habitual responses.
In those with PFC damage, the SAS may be damaged as well.
