A specialised role for Rostral prefrontal cortex (area 10) in prospective memory

The patients with lesions that involved the most anterior parts of the left frontal lobe have been shown to be most impaired at following arbitary rules when switching tasks after a delay in a multitasking procedure, despite showing no retrospective memory deficit. However we recently found that it is right hemisphere rostral prefrontal (area 10) lesions that cause isolated impairments in the delayed task switching component. This suggests that different rostral areas within the frontal cortex, whilst operating as a system, may make separate contributions to situations involving delayed intentions. With two PET studies, we found that cerebral blood flow in medial area 10 decreases in prospective memory tasks (relative to ongoing tasks alone), whilst lateral area 10 regions show concomitant increases