Social skills are significantly impaired in people suffering from alcoholism due to the neurotoxic effects of alcohol on the brain, especially the prefrontal cortex area of the brain.

Higher brain areas are seen as more promising, especially the prefrontal cortex, which is involved in a range of higher cognitive functions collectively known as executive functions.

These layers receive input from other cortical areas, especially associational, perirhinal, and parahippocampal cortices, as well as prefrontal cortex.

The increase in volume over time has affected different areas within the brain unequally-the temporal lobes, which contain centers for language processing have increased disproportionately, as has the prefrontal cortex which has been related to complex decision making and moderating social behavior.

These results suggest that gambler's fallacy relies more on the prefrontal cortex ( responsible for executive, goal-directed processes ) and less on the brain areas that control affective decision-making.

They also have a unique physiological pathway that involves strong connections from the amygdala into the prefrontal cortex, but much weaker connections running back from the prefrontal cortex to the amygdala.

This recognition might occur in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which is one of the few areas deactivated during REM sleep and where working memory occurs.

Agreeing with data implicating catecholaminergic mechanisms, modafinil increases phasic activity in the locus coeruleus ( the source for CNS norepinephrine ) while reducing tonic activity with respect to interconnections with the prefrontal cortex.

Approaching the subject from the perspective of neuroscience and social psychology, Kathleen Taylor suggests that manipulation of the prefrontal cortex activates " brainwashing ", rendering a person more susceptible to black-and-white thinking.

As such, the unique structure of this area allows its cortiocortical efferents, specifically layer III to layer I of the prefrontal cortex, to exert much excitatory, to the globally modulatory frontal lobes.

Previous research suggested that selective activation of left prefrontal cortex might increase the likelihood that an attitude would predict a relevant behavior.

One way therefore to increase persuasion would seem to be to selectively activate the right prefrontal cortex.

Davidson's research lab has focused on the role of the prefrontal cortex ( PFC ) and amygdala in manifesting human personality.

A 2009 study based on electrophysiological recordings of large ensembles of isolated cells in the prefrontal cortex of rats revealed that cell assemblies that formed upon learning were more preferentially active during subsequent sleep episodes.

* Attention versus memory in prefrontal cortex

ADHD is thought to be caused by an insufficiency of dopamine and norepinephrine activity in the prefrontal cortex of the brain.

The earliest mention of experiments on the neural basis of working memory can be traced back to over 100 years ago, when Hitzig and Ferrier described ablation experiments of the prefrontal cortex ( PFC ), they concluded that the frontal cortex was important for cognitive rather than sensory processes.

Another study of the same group has shown that, after training, measured brain activity related to working memory increased in the prefrontal cortex, an area that many researchers have associated with working memory functions.

* Attention versus memory in prefrontal cortex

Adolescents who were subjected to abuse and neglect appear to have decreased gray matter in the prefrontal cortex.

Research has shown that the trait of defensive repression is related to relative left prefrontal activation.

The advantage to using these types of patients is that dopaminergic projections to the prefrontal cortex are more likely to be intact.

The ventral striatum is generally associated with limbic structures, such as the amygdala, hippocampus, midline thalamus, and certain regions of the prefrontal cortex.

How activating the 5-HT < sub > 2A </ sub > receptor leads to psychedelia is still unknown, but it likely somehow involves excitation of neurons in the prefrontal cortex.

The anterior or prefrontal area is involved in impulse control, judgement with everyday life and situations, language, memory, motor function, problem solving, sexual behaviour, socialization and spontaneity.

In the prefrontal cortex, however, there are very few DAT proteins, and dopamine is inactivated instead by reuptake via the norepinephrine transporter ( NET ), presumably on neighboring norepinephrine neurons, then enzymatic breakdown by COMT into 3-MT.

The DAT pathway is roughly an order of magnitude faster than the NET pathway: in mice, dopamine concentrations decay with a half-life of 200 milliseconds in the caudate nucleus ( which uses the DAT pathway ) versus 2, 000 milliseconds in the prefrontal cortex.

The lack of FMRP, which represses mRNA production and thereby protein synthesis, leads to exaggerated LTD. FMRP also appears to affect dopamine pathways in the prefrontal cortex which is believed to result in the attention deficit, hyperactivity and impulse control problems associated with FXS.

Some of this developmental risk as in the case of placental infarction, maternal anemia and cardiac problems may cause intrauterine hypoxia, umbilical cord occlusion or cord prolapse may cause ischemia, resulting in cerebral injury, the prefrontal cortex in the fetus and neonate is highly susceptible to damage as a result of oxygen deprivation which has been shown to contribute to executive dysfunction, ADHD, and may affect personality traits associated with both eating disorders and comorbid disorders such as impulsivity, mental rigidity and obsessionality.

The frontal lobe or prefrontal association complex is involved in planning actions and movement, as well as abstract thought.

As one study shows, S-adenosyl methionine ( SAM ) concentration in patients ' prefrontal cortex is twice as high as in the cortices of non-affected people.

It has been shown that a certain protein is lost in schizophrenics that causes dendrites and spines to deteriorate in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, a part of the neocortex, which plays a key role in information processing, attention, memory, orderly thinking and planning which are all functions that deteriorate in schizophrenics.

In humans, schizophrenia is caused by deterioration of neuropil, with much evidence specifically pointing to dysfunction in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex ( DLPFC ).

The " behavior switching " that takes place within the basal ganglia is influenced by signals from many parts of the brain, including the prefrontal cortex, which plays a key role in executive functions.

Those with Alzheimer ’ s disease lose the capacity to be influenced by placebos, and this is attributed to the loss of their prefrontal cortex dependent capacity to have expectations.

This is similar to the prefrontal lobe's role in attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, where underactivation is common.

The prefrontal bone is a bone separating the lacrimal and frontal bones in many tetrapod skulls.

The limbic system is also tightly connected to the prefrontal cortex.

To cure severe emotional disorders, this connection was sometimes surgically severed, a procedure of psychosurgery, called a prefrontal lobotomy ( this is actually a misnomer ).

The limbic system is also tightly connected to the prefrontal cortex.

They occur not only during placebo analgesia but after receiving the analgesic placebo ( the areas are different here, and involve the medial prefrontal cortex, posterior parietal cortex and inferior parietal lobule ).

In humans the frontal pole area of the prefrontal cortex includes not only area 10 but part of BA 9.

.. it is the only prefrontal region that is predominantly ( and possibly exclusively ) interconnected with supramodal cortex in the PFC, anterior temporal cortex and cingulate cortex.

They also discovered that this association is seen only in women with a variant form of another gene, Catechol-O-methyl transferase also known as COMT, which is involved in regulating the function of the prefrontal cortex, a critical regulator of mood.

Additionally, the prefrontal dorsalateral cortex ( PDC ) is selectively activated only by stimuli considered beautiful whereas prefrontal activity as a whole is activated during the judgment of both pleasing and unpleasing stimuli.

They have only been found thus far in the anterior cingulate cortex ( ACC ), fronto-insular cortex ( FI ), and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.

For example, in a lexical analysis task, subjects showed activity in the left inferior prefrontal cortex only when identifying whether the word represented a living or nonliving object, and not when identifying whether or not the word contained an " a ".

Not only did fMRI detect activity in the word-recognition portion of the cortex, but additionally, activity is often detected in the parietal and prefrontal cortices.