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Introduction: Today, there is a broad consensus on the boundaries of what we call the prefrontal cortex, but this has not always been the case. The purpose of this historical review is to examine in greater depth the topographical origins of the term «prefrontal» and analyse its conceptual evolution., Development: The article is structured according to the main criteria that have been proposed successively over time in order to define the limits of the prefrontal cortex, namely, morphological, cytoarchitectural and hodological. During the second half of the 19th century, the criteria were essentially of a morphological nature. David Ferrier popularised the term «prefrontal» in this period. In the early years of the 20th century, criteria based on the architectural organisation of the cerebral cortex (or cytoarchitecture) predominated, and their main representative was Korbinian Brodmann. At the end of the 1940s, Jerzy E. Rose and Clinton N. Woolsey considered that the study of brain connections (hodology) was the way to define the boundaries of the prefrontal cortex and proposed that this frontal region was the main area of projection of the dorsomedial nucleus of the thalamus., Conclusions: Historically, the limits of the so-called «prefrontal» region of the brain has been blurred and changing, as a result of the different criteria used at different times.

Perhaps the most famous brain injury in history was a penetrating wound suffered by a rail road worker named Phineas Gage on September 13, 1848. Twelve years after his injury, on the 21st of May, 1860 Phineas Gage died of an epileptic seizure. In 1868 Dr. Harlow gave an outline of Gage's case history and first disclosed his remarkable personality change. One might think this report would assure Gage a permanent place in the annals of neurology, but this was not the case. There was a good reason for this neglect: hardly anyone knew about Harlow's 1868 report. Dr. David Ferrier, an early proponent of the localisation of cerebral function, rescued Gage from obscurity and used the case as the highlight of his famous 1878 Goulstonian lectures. Gage had, through a tragic natural experiment, provided proof of what Ferrier's studies showed: the pre-frontal cortex was not a "non-functional" brain area. A rod going through the prefrontal cortex of Phineas Gage signalled the beginning of the quest to understand the enigmas of this fascinating region of the brain., (Copyright © 2010 Sociedad Española de Neurología. Published by Elsevier Espana. All rights reserved.)

Objective: The results of several studies suggest that there is a critical timeframe during development in which experiences of maltreatment and sexual abuse may lead to permanent or long-lasting neurobiological changes that particularly affect the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis response. The aim of the present study was to provide an updated review on the main neurobiological consequences of child sexual abuse., Methods: We selected articles published between January 1999 and January 2010 in English or Spanish that focused on the neurobiological consequences of child sexual abuse available through Medline, Scopus and Web of Science. We also examined the references in published articles on the consequences of sexual victimization in childhood., Results: In this review we included 34 studies on neurobiological consequences, indicating different kinds of effects, namely: neuroendocrine, structural, functional and neuropsychological consequences, which affect a large number of victims., Conclusions: The existing body of work on the neurobiological consequences of maltreatment shows the need to consider maltreatment and child sexual abuse as health problems that affect different areas of victims' lives, which would in turn favor the development of intervention and treatment programs that take these multiple effects into account., (Copyright © 2010 SESPAS. Published by Elsevier Espana. All rights reserved.)

Introduction: The first five years of life are critical in the development of the executive functions. The changes that are seen to take place in executive competence and capacity are closely related to the maturational processes of the prefrontal cortex., Development: Evidence gathered over the past three decades indicates that executive functioning begins to develop earlier than was previously believed. At early ages it is possible to observe the appearance of different cognitive capacities that will later make up what we call the executive functions. The purpose of this article is to describe how the executive functions develop over the first five years of life and their relationship with the maturation of the prefrontal cortex., Conclusions: The development of the executive functions involves the development of a series of cognitive capacities that have to enable the child to retain and manipulate information and to act accordingly; to self-regulate their behaviour so that they can act in a reflexive rather than impulsive manner; and to adapt their behaviour to fit the changes that can occur in the surroundings. Early upsets in executive development have a drastic restricting effect on the child's capacity to cope with novel situations, as well as to have the flexibility required to adapt to changes with ease.

Cognitive dysfunction has been widely studied in multiple sclerosis (MS), however decision-making has been less investigated. The current study examined the decision-making processes of patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) using a computerized version of the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT). This task was applied to 18 patients with clinically diagnosed MS and 18 healthy control subjects matched for age, sex, and years of education. The results showed that IGT scores differ significantly between patients with MS and the healthy control subjects: the patients with MS made significantly less advantageous decisions than the controls in the IGT. Possible causes of impaired decision-making in multiple sclerosis are discussed.

Objective: We used an event related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) method to examine the neural basis of associative recognition memory deficit in schizophrenia., Methods: Fifteen people with schizophrenia and 18 healthy control subjects were scanned with fMRI while performing a memory task (coding and recognition) of visual objects. During coding, the subjects studied items and pairs of items. During recovery, the subjects had to recognize items (old/new decisions) and recognize associations (intact/rearranged decisions). The study design was based on a random effect model and the fMRI analysis was restricted to correct items only., Results: At the behavioral level, both groups performed equally well on item recognition, whereas people with schizophrenia demonstrated poorer performance on associative recognition. At the brain level, comparison between associative and item recognition tasks revealed greater left dorsolateral prefrontal and right inferior prefrontal activations in the control group relative to the schizophrenia group., Conclusions: The findings of this fMRI study suggest the prefrontal cortex as the basis for the selective memory deficit for associative recognition observed in schizophrenia.

Introduction: The terms 'executive functioning' or 'executive control' refer to a set of mechanisms involved in the improvement of cognitive processes to guide them towards the resolution of complex problems. Both the frontal lobes, acting as structure, and the executive processes, acting as function, work with memory contents, operating with information placed in the diencephalic structures and in the medial temporal lobe. Generally, we can state that many works find an association between frontal damage and specific memory shortages like working memory deficit, metamemory problems, source amnesia, or difficulties in the prospective memory., Development: This paper is a critical review of the working memory concept and proposes a new term: the attentional operative system that works with memory contents. Concerning the metamemory, the frontal lobes are essential for monitoring processes in general and for 'the feeling of knowing' kind of judgements in particular., Conclusions: Patients suffering prefrontal damage show serious problems to remember the information source. Thus, the information is rightly remembered but the spatiotemporal context where that information was learned has been forgotten. Finally, the prospective memory deals with remembering to make something in a particular moment in the future and performing the plan previously drawn up.

Introduction: The executive function is a collection of cognitive abilities that allow the anticipation and establishment of goals, the formation of plans and programs, the beginning of activities and mental operations, the auto regulation of tasks, and the ability to carry on them efficiently. Both psychopathy and disexecutive syndrome have been considered as prototypes of frontal lobe damage, although they have been related very recently., Development: Psychopathy construct is not clear defined in the international classifications of mental disorders. They have focused only in the antisocial disorder of personality. A clear conceptual delimitation of psychopathy is necessary. The typical behaviours of psychopaths could be related with structural and functional brain alterations showed by the neuroimaging techniques and neuropsychological tests. These deficits are the neurological support of the inability of psychopaths to the integration of reasoning process with emotions, and specifically, of the presence of symptoms as impulsivity, inattention, context dependency, pathological perseverations and metacognitive alteration., Conclusion: The relevant conclusion of this study is the close relationship between reasoning and emotion. Executive function could be the explaining nexus of this connection.