The involvement of the frontal lobes in cognitive estimation

Abstract

Ninety-six patients with localised cerebral lesions were tested on a task of providing reasonable answers to Cognitive Estimate questions. These questions are ones that can be answered using general knowledge available to almost all subjects, but for which no immediately obvious strategy is available. It was found that patients with frontal lesions gave significantly more bizarre answers than patients with more posterior lesions. This effect is interpreted in terms of Luria's (1966) theory of the planning functions of the frontal lobes.