Executive Function

Cards (17)

  • Dysexecutive syndrome

    A dysregulation of executive functions that is associated with frontal lobe damage. Encompasses emotional, motivational, behavioral and cognitive deficits.
  • Dysexecutive syndrome

    • Particular damage is in the prefrontal cortex
    • Could impair planning and organization, could manifest as difficulties in inhibiting inappropriate responses and controlling impulses
  • Confabulation
    Also known as "honest lying" and involves patients who provide information or act based on information that is false and inappropriate in context
  • Confabulation
    • The pathological production of false memories
    • A disruption in memory processes characterized by the production of false or distorted memories w/o the intention to deceive. False memories are fabricated and may be believable to the individual themselves
  • Disinhibition syndrome

    In cognitive neuroscience refers to a set of symptoms characterized by a lack of inhibition or impulse control, often resulting in impulsive behaviors, poor judgment, and difficulty regulating emotions and actions
  • Disinhibition syndrome

    • Typically arises from dysfunction or damage to brain regions involved in executive functioning and inhibitory control, particularly the frontal lobes of the brain
    • Can result from various neurological conditions, including traumatic brain injury, stroke, frontotemporal dementia, Alzheimer's disease, and certain psychiatric disorders
    • Dysfunction or damage to frontal lobe structures, particularly the prefrontal cortex, can disrupt inhibitory control mechanisms and lead to disinhibited behaviors
  • Phineas Gage

    Famous case study who had damage to their left prefrontal cortex and after surgery had difficulty with decision making and also had a personality shift
  • Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST)

    A neuropsychological test to examine task-switching. Participants are given an additional stack of cards and are asked to sort them into four piles below the four cards already on the table with no explicit criteria on how to sort them.
  • Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST)

    • Studies suggest frontal lobe damage tend to do worse than posterior damage and damage to the dorsolateral prefrontal area tend to perform the poorest
    • One component is task-or set switching
  • Perseveration
    Patients with frontal lobe damage often exhibit the behavior of repeating the same action or thought over and over again
  • Perseveration
    • Explained by the supervisory attentional system
    • Disruptions to mechanism that code for previously completed tasks or goals could lead to preservation
  • Error-related negativity (ERN)

    A particular set of brain mechanisms that helps to monitor our performance and detect errors, evidence comes from (ERN), an ERP signal
  • Error-related negativity (ERN)

    • Linked to error monitoring because its amplitude increases under conditions in which response accuracy is emphasized versus speed, and because the larger the error, the larger the amplitude of the ERN
    • Arises from rostral regions of the anterior cingulate, located on the medial portion of the frontal lobe
  • Working memory

    Is used to keep information on-line to control behaviors and acts as a sort of mental scratch pad during everyday actions
  • Multiple demand (MD) network

    • Frontal lobes support executive function in undifferentiated manner – same set of brain regions becomes activated across a wide variety of tasks
    • Concept of Multiple Demand System is utilized for executive processing across many different domains including language, memory, and math
    • Parietal lobe, basal ganglia, and cerebellum are part of the MD system as well
  • Domain-general
    Process information from multiple domains
  • Domain-specific

    Process information from one domain but not others