The involvement of orbitofrontal cerebrum in cognitive tasks.

Although the frontal lobes are frequently associated with high-level cognitive functions, patients with significant frontal damage often maintain normal "intelligence". While recent research has clarified some aspects of this enigma, specific questions remain concerning the nature of the deficit in these patients and its relation to lesion localization within the frontal lobes. A group of psychiatric patients who had undergone prefrontal leucotomy 25 years earlier and whose frontal lesions were bilateral and maximal orbitofrontally were evaluated. Sixteen leucotomized schizophrenics, divided into three groups based upon recovery after psychosurgery, were compared to two control groups: (1) non-leucotomized chronic schizophrenics; (2) normal subjects. Four tests were administered: Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, Wisconsin Card Sorting test, Visual Metaphor test, and the Visual Verbal test of abstraction. The results suggest that orbitofrontal pathology does cause impaired performance on certain cognitive tests, which appeared independent of IQ measures.