The cerebral cortex is responsible for higher-order thinking and is larger and more developed in humans. It is divided into four areas, each with specific functions. The frontal lobe is critical for emotion, problem-solving, and recognition of speech. Brain scans and studies of brain damage provide information about how the cortex works.
The cerebral cortex, also known as the main cortex or simply the cortex, is the part of the brain that handles so-called “higher-order thinking.” This structure is present in the brains of many animals, but humans have an unusually large and well-developed cerebral cortex. The advanced functions of the human cerebral cortex are what distinguish humans from other animals.
As most people know, the cortex is divided into two halves, known as hemispheres, and each hemisphere is responsible for a variety of functions. There is some duplication, where both hemispheres perform the same activity, but other cortex functions may be limited to only one hemisphere. Curiously, if people suffer brain damage when they are very young, their brains can remap themselves to restore some function to the cortex that would otherwise have been lost.
There are four areas in the cerebral cortex: the frontal, parietal, occipital, and temporal lobes. The temporal lobe is responsible for cortex function related to auditory perception, language, and memory. The occipital lobe is dedicated to visual information processing, while the parietal lobe handles voluntary movement, spatial orientation, touch, and number processing.
The function of the frontal lobe cortex is particularly critical. This lobe of the cerebral cortex is involved in emotion, problem solving, critical thinking, planning ability, and the recognition of parts of speech. Often these areas are active simultaneously, interacting to interpret and respond to stimuli. A large number of connections can be found in the brain to coordinate brain activity, and the human brain in particular has a particularly complex network compared to the brains of other animals.
This disruption of cortex function is a bit simplistic. In fact, interaction between different lobes is needed almost constantly to cope with stimuli, and things like language aren’t necessarily isolated to different parts of the brain. For example, different parts of the brain are activated when people work with ideographic or alphabetic writing systems. Indeed, some studies have found people who are dyslexic in one writing system but not another, or who suffer brain damage that prevents them from writing in one system but allows perfect literacy in another.
Information about the function of the cortex comes from a variety of sources. Brain scans can be used to examine the cortex while it is active to see which areas are most active, and detailed cases of people who have suffered brain damage have also provided a wealth of useful information. People who study the brain are always discovering new and interesting information about how it works.
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