PSYC33H3 Chapter Notes -Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex, Frontal Lobe, Episodic Memory
Document Summary
Executive functions and self awareness are the highest achievements of brain evolution. These depend on multiple of integrating brain regions which make them highly sensitive to brain injury. Imprecision and inconsistencies in the definition/assessment create a clinical challenge. Even tho neuroscience had advanced our understandings of these abilities there is no theoretically driven rehab program. Executive functions: collection of abilities that help us plan goal, weight alternatives, select a course of action, sequence intervening activities, and regulate behavior so that a goal can be achieved. All of these share the common element of control and direction of basic low lever abilities. The human ability to maintain a consistent sense of self across time, from past to present to future. Damage to the prefrontal lobe causes deficits in autonoetic awareness and personality changes (personal agency- see themselves as separate from the environment yet free to act on it).
