Rg. Morris et al., THE EFFECT OF GOAL-SUBGOAL CONFLICT ON PLANNING ABILITY AFTER FRONTAL-LOBE AND TEMPORAL-LOBE LESIONS IN HUMANS, Neuropsychologia, 35(8), 1997, pp. 1147-1157
Twenty-one patients with unilateral prefrontal cortical neurosurgical
lesions (11 left and 10 right) and 38 patients with unilateral tempora
l lobectomy (19 left and 19 right) were compared to 44 matched control
subjects on their performance on the 3-D Computerized Tower of Hanoi
(3-D CTOH) test. The problems were split into those with or without a
significant goal-subgoal conflict determined by whether the correct fi
rst move in each problem took the subject apparently away or towards t
he final goal state. The left frontal lesion and right temporal lobect
omy groups were significantly impaired on problems with goal-subgoal c
onflicts. In the left frontal group, this deficit was confined to earl
ier four-move problems, whereas the right temporal group showed a more
general deficit on later five-move problems. The left frontal lesion
deficit is explained in terms of an inability to inhibit the response
compatible with achieving a final goal, whereas the impairment in the
right lesion group was related to a specific impairment in spatial mem
ory. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.