title: Impulsivity, risk-taking, and the ability to synthesize fragmented information after frontal lobectomy.
abstract: Patients with unilateral frontal- or temporal-lobe excisions and control subjects performed a cognitive risk-taking task in which target items (line-drawings or words) had to be guessed on the basis of partial-information clues. For each item, subjects chose to guess with either one, two, three, or all four clues, for a possible reward of 30, 20, 10, or 5 points, respectively. Two clue-presentation conditions were used to allow the differentiation of risk-taking from impulsivity. Whereas no group obtained high risk-taking scores, patients with frontal-lobe lesions demonstrated impulsive behaviour when manual responses were required. Only the left frontal-lobe group was impaired at solving the clues.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
authors.forename: L A
authors.initials: LA
authors.lastname: Miller
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology*; D004828:Epilepsies, Partial / Q000601:surgery; D005260:Female; D005625:Frontal Lobe / Q000502:physiology* / Q000601:surgery; D007839:Functional Laterality / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D007175:Impulsive Behavior; D008297:Male; D012309:Risk-Taking; D013702:Temporal Lobe / Q000502:physiology / Q000601:surgery; D014705:Verbal Behavior / Q000502:physiology; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*