Accessibility Tools

Skip to main content

Ricerca

Prefrontal cortex

DATE: 28/02/2023

Glossary entries in the Research category

INDEX
The Role of the Prefrontal Cortex
How to Train the Prefrontal Cortex?

The Role of the Prefrontal Cortex

The prefrontal cortex plays a fundamental role in numerous processes that characterize us as a human species, such as abstract reasoning, judgment, behavioral regulation, and insight. The prefrontal cortex has many connections to the rest of the cortex, representing the neuroanatomical substrate of the so-called Executive Functions. Executive Functions refer to the abilities to plan, execute, and complete goal-directed behaviors through coordinated and strategic actions, integrating and synthesizing information, and regulating emotional behavior.

Executive functions are linked to learning from new experiences, planning, decision-making, acquiring new behaviors, and all other derived abilities.

How to Train the Prefrontal Cortex?

Due to its close relationship with attention and willpower, the prefrontal cortex is activated in all tasks and exercises that require the intentional use of these abilities. It has been found that various meditative practices are useful for this purpose, including both static practices and mindful movement. Techniques known as FAM (Focused Attention Meditation) directly engage the prefrontal cortex when the practitioner intentionally maintains attention on an internal or external object. Focused attention can then be directed to various exercises, such as previsualization, visualization, naming emotions, or organized movement, as in the case of Quadrato Motor Training.

 

    • Support the research that changes lives

    Support the research
    that changes lives

    Choose the amount of your donation

 

Bibliography
  • Ben-Soussan, T. D., Glicksohn, J., & Berkovich-Ohana, A. (2015). From cerebellar activation and connectivity to cognition: a review of the Quadrato Motor Training. BioMed research international, 2015.
  • Arnaud D’Argembeau, David Stawarczyk, Steve Majerus, Fabienne Collette, Martial Van der Linden, Dorothée Feyers, Pierre Maquet, Eric Salmon; The Neural Basis of Personal Goal Processing When Envisioning Future Events. J Cogn Neurosci 2010; 22 (8): 1701–1713. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn.2009.21314
  • Finger, Stanley, Origins of neuroscience: a history of explorations into brain function, Oxford University Press, 1994.
  • Paoletti, P., & Ben-Soussan, T. D. (2020). Reflections on inner and outer silence and consciousness without contents according to the sphere model of consciousness. Frontiers in Psychology, 1807.
  • Miller EK, Freedman DJ, Wallis JD, 1424, in The prefrontal cortex: categories, concepts and cognition, vol. 357, Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond., B, Biol. Sci., August 2002, pp. 1123–36, DOI:10.1098/rstb.2002.1099

Be part of the change. Sharing content responsibly is a gesture that stands for sustainability.

Let’s train emotional intelligence: what emotion does this article evoke in you?

Loading spinner

You might be interested in

Search by category

List of terms

Subscribe to the newsletter