Cognitive Functions
The right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) has been typically implicated in go/no go tasks. In such a task, the participant has to inhibit a prepotent response (for instance stop pressing a button when a red signal appears). It seems that the same area is also implicated in risk aversion: a study found that higher risk aversion correlated with higher activity at IFG. This might be explained as an inhibition signal to accept a risky option. Disruption of activity of this area with Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation or Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) indeed leads to change in risk attitudes, as behaviorally demonstrated by choices over risky outcomes. The left IFG is extremely important for language production and verb comprehension (left side corresponds to the 'dominant side', for right-handed persons). Commonly known as "Broca's Area", persons with damage in this region often have non-fluent aphasia. With non-fluent aphasia, speech is notably difficult to produce but the speech that is produced is high in content compared to Wernicke's aphasiacs (persons with damage to the posterior language regions) whose aphasia is considered "fluent" yet rambling.
Read more about this topic: Inferior Frontal Gyrus
Famous quotes containing the words cognitive and/or functions:
“Creativity becomes more visible when adults try to be more attentive to the cognitive processes of children than to the results they achieve in various fields of doing and understanding.”
—Loris Malaguzzi (20th century)
“The mind is a finer body, and resumes its functions of feeding, digesting, absorbing, excluding, and generating, in a new and ethereal element. Here, in the brain, is all the process of alimentation repeated, in the acquiring, comparing, digesting, and assimilating of experience. Here again is the mystery of generation repeated.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)