Function
The executive functions of the frontal lobes involve the ability to recognize future consequences resulting from current actions, to choose between good and bad actions (or better and best), override and suppress socially unacceptable responses, and determine similarities and differences between things or events.
The frontal lobes also play an important part in retaining longer term memories which are not task-based. These are often memories associated with emotions derived from input from the brain's limbic system. The frontal lobe modifies those emotions to generally fit socially acceptable norms.
Psychological tests that measure frontal lobe function include finger tapping, Wisconsin Card Sorting Task, and measures of verbal and figural fluency.
Read more about this topic: Frontal Lobe
Famous quotes containing the word function:
“To make us feel small in the right way is a function of art; men can only make us feel small in the wrong way.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“It is the function of vice to keep virtue within reasonable bounds.”
—Samuel Butler (18351902)
“The function of comedy is to dispel ... unconsciousness by turning the searchlight of the keenest moral and intellectual analysis right on to it.”
—George Bernard Shaw (18561950)