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Brain Advance Access originally published online on June 23, 2005
Brain 2005 128(12):2882-2890; doi:10.1093/brain/awh577
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© The Author (2005). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Guarantors of Brain. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Better without (lateral) frontal cortex? Insight problems solved by frontal patients

Carlo Reverberi1,2, Alessio Toraldo3, Serena D'Agostini4 and Miran Skrap4

1 International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA–ISAS), Trieste, Italy, 2 Department of Psychology, Università Milano–Bicocca, Milano, Italy, 3 Department of Psychology, Università degli Studi di Pavia, Pavia, Italy and 4 Azienda Ospedaliera S. Maria della Misericordia, Udine, Italy

Correspondence to: Carlo Reverberi, Department of Psychology, Università degli Studi di Milano–Bicocca, Piazza Ateneo Nuovo, 1, 20126 Milano, Italy E-mail: carlo.reverberi{at}unimib.it

A recently proposed theory on frontal lobe functions claims that the prefrontal cortex, particularly its dorso-lateral aspect, is crucial in defining a set of responses suitable for a particular task, and biasing these for selection. This activity is carried out for virtually any kind of non-routine tasks, without distinction of content. The aim of this study is to test the prediction of Frith's ‘sculpting the response space’ hypothesis by means of an ‘insight’ problem-solving task, namely the matchstick arithmetic task. Starting from Knoblich et al.'s interpretation for the failure of healthy controls to solve the matchstick problem, and Frith's theory on the role of dorsolateral frontal cortex, we derived the counterintuitive prediction that patients with focal damage to the lateral frontal cortex should perform better than a group of healthy participants on this rather difficult task. We administered the matchstick task to 35 patients (aged 26–65 years) with a single focal brain lesion as determined by a CT or an MRI scan, and to 23 healthy participants (aged 34–62 years). The findings seemed in line with theoretical predictions. While only 43% of healthy participants could solve the most difficult matchstick problems (‘type C’), 82% of lateral frontal patients did so (Fisher's exact test, P < 0.05). In conclusion, the combination of Frith's and Knoblich et al.'s theories was corroborated.

Key Words: executive functions; frontal cortex; insight, problem solving; thinking

Abbreviations: CTL = control group; LAT = lateral frontal; MED = medial frontal

Received March 2, 2005. Revised May 2, 2005. Accepted May 22, 2005.


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