Beyond a rod through the skull: A systematic review of lesion studies of the human ventromedial frontal lobe

ABSTRACT

Neuropsychological studies from the past century have associated damage to the ventromedial frontal lobes (VMF) with impairments in a variety of domains, including memory, executive function, emotion, social cognition, and valuation. A central question in the literature is whether these seemingly distinct functions are subserved by different sub-regions within the VMF, or whether VMF supports a broader cognitive process that is crucial to these varied domains. In this comprehensive review of the neuropsychological literature from the last two decades, we present a qualitative synthesis of 184 papers that have examined the psychological impairments that result from VMF damage. We discuss these findings in the context of several theoretical frameworks and advocate for the view that VMF is critical for the formation and representation of schema and cognitive maps.

KEYWORDS:

• Lesion
• vmpfc
• systematic review
• schema
• state

Acknowledgments

We acknowledge Drs. Emily Falk and Avinash Vaidya for providing valuable comments on the draft of this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Linda Q. Yu http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4658-9100

Notes

1 “ventral frontal”, “ventromedial frontal”, “medial frontal”, “orbital frontal”, “orbito- frontal”, “orbitofrontal”, “ventral prefrontal”, “ventromedial prefrontal”, “medial prefrontal”, “orbital prefrontal”, “ventral PFC”, “ventromedial PFC”, “medial PFC”, “orbital PFC”, “orbitoventral”, “VMF”, “VMPFC”, “OFC”, “OMPFC”, “MPFC”

2 “alzheimer’s disease”, “Alzheimer disease”, “dementia”, “semantic dementia”, “frontotemporal dementia”, “epilepsy”, “photic stimulation”, “epilepsy, temporal lobe”, “seizures”, “schizophrenia”, “major depressive”, “parkinson disease”, “addiction”, “diabetes”, “multiple sclerosis”, “obsessive compulsive disorder”, “case report”, “review”