There are four lobes of the brain in each cerebral hemisphere i.e. frontal, parietal, temporal and occipital.  Each individual lobe is recognised to have particular key roles, however it is important to note that they do not function in isolation but as part of a wider system of neural networks.

Key roles of the frontal lobes:

  • The motor strip (at the back of each frontal lobe) sends messages to muscles which coordinates their activity.
  • The olfactory nerve (at the bottom of the frontal lobe) is responsible for sense of smell and receives sensory information from the nose.
  • Broca’s area (in the left cerebral hemisphere) is responsible for the production of language.
  • The prefrontal area (at the front of the frontal lobes) is important for many activities including attention, memory, information processing and executive functioning (e.g. learning, planning, organising, reasoning, decision making, problem solving, social judgement, emotional and behavioural regulation).
  • The frontal lobes have a key role in the expression of personality.

 

Key roles of the parietal lobes:

  • Integrating and interpreting sensory information (i.e. sensation and perception).
  • Memory.
  • Language processing.
  • Spatial awareness.

 

Key roles of the temporal lobes:

 

The key role of the occipital lobes is vision and the interpretation and processing of visual stimuli. The occipital lobes interpret shape, colour, depth and motion. Damage to the occipital lobe can result in visual perceptual impairments. The occipital lobes are located at the back of the brain; this is one of the reasons why a blow to the back of the head can make a person “see stars”.