This is the system we all have to work with. It sounds poorly designed at first,as the smart
prefrontal cortex has less stamina than the thoughtless, repeating basal ganglia does, but it's
actually brilliant when you know how to work it.How do clever weaklings ever overcome their dumb,
strong counterparts? I'll give you a hint-it's not through brute physical force. I'm sure you
already know that, perhaps because you are now recalling the failed attempts of your conscious
mind to control your subconscious mind by brute force or willpower. The answer, of course, is to
employ smart strategies to overcome the prefrontal cortex's natural weaknesses.
2.3 The Prefrontal Cortex-Your Defense Against Automated Behavior
In order to understand the prefrontal cortex better, we're going to look at what happens when
it's gone. How does a brain operate without one? Not well.The upcoming study shows what the
prefrontal cortex does, as well as what the rest of the brain does. When you remove something,
you can see the impact of what it did and also how the parts operate without its influence.
Francois Lhermitte was a French neurologist who examined patients with damaged frontal lobes.
What he found in the following study was evidence that the brain's operation changes
drastically without its "manager," the prefrontal cortex (which is part of the frontal lobes).
There are two groups of interest in Lhermitte's study-people with damaged frontal lobes and
people with healthy frontal lobes. In the experiment, the subjects would sit across from an
examiner, who asked interview-style questions. The examiner's task was to display indifference
to the interviewee, refuse to respond to their questions, and occasionally perform random and
puzzling gestures. He'd thumb his nose,give a military salute, fold paper and put it into an
envelope, chew paper, sing, tap his leg, whimper, and more. (Ha!Science is fun[ny]!) Here's
what they found.
Healthy-lobed people, as one would expect, found his behavior odd. In purely scientific terms,
the response was,"What's wrong with this dude?" Many of the younger participants laughed. And
when asked if they thought to imitate him, they said, "No, not at all."
But here's where it gets very interesting.Almost all people with frontal lobe damage did
imitate the examiner's absurd gestures-they imitated him with great precision and without fail.
For example, the men willingly urinated on a wall in front of others without any hint of
surprise or concern. When they lacked the ability to imitate him exactly (such as not having
paper to fold or chew), they were said to find ways to compensate "perfectly."
From the study: "When interviewed after an examination, all [damaged lobe]patients could
remember the examiner's gestures and, when questioned as to the reason for their imitative
behavior,replied that because the examiner had made the gesture, they felt they had to
imitate him. On being told that they had not been told to imitate the gestures,their answer was
that obviously since the gestures had been made, they must be imitated. After being told not
to imitate,most patients displayed the same IB(imitation behavior)."