Function
The DLPFC plays a role in sustaining attention and working memory. Lesions to the DLPFC impair short-term memory and cause difficulty inhibiting responses. Lesions may also eliminate much of the ability to make judgements about what's relevant and what's not as well as causing problems in organization.
The DLPFC has recently been found to be involved in exhibiting self-control. http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2009/501/3
The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is one of the few areas deactivated during REM sleep. Neuroscientist J. Allan Hobson has hypothesized that activation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex produces lucid dreams.
Read more about this topic: Brodmann Area 46
Famous quotes containing the word function:
“The intension of a proposition comprises whatever the proposition entails: and it includes nothing else.... The connotation or intension of a function comprises all that attribution of this predicate to anything entails as also predicable to that thing.”
—Clarence Lewis (1883–1964)
“To look backward for a while is to refresh the eye, to restore it, and to render it the more fit for its prime function of looking forward.”
—Margaret Fairless Barber (1869–1901)
“Nobody seriously questions the principle that it is the function of mass culture to maintain public morale, and certainly nobody in the mass audience objects to having his morale maintained.”
—Robert Warshow (1917–1955)