, or BA45, is part of the
frontal cortex in the
human brain. Situated on the lateral surface, inferior to
BA9 and adjacent to
BA46.
This area is also known as 'pars triangular (of the inferior frontal gyrus)'. In the human, it occupies the triangular part of
inferior frontal gyrus (H) and, surrounding the anterior horizontal limb of
lateral sulcus (H), a portion of the orbital part of inferior frontal gyrus (H). Bounded caudally by the anterior ascending limb of lateral sulcus (H), it borders on the
insula in the depth of the lateral sulcus.
Cytoarchitectonically it is bounded caudally by the
opercular area 44, rostrodorsally by the
middle frontal area 46 and ventrally by the
orbital area 47 (Brodmann-1909).
Functions
Together with
BA 44 it comprises
Broca's area a region which is active in semantic tasks, such as semantic decision tasks (does this word represent an abstract or concrete entity?) and generation tasks (generate a verb associated to a noun).
The precise role of BA45 in semantic tasks remains controversial. For some researchers, its role would be to subserve semantic retrieval or semantic working memory processes. Under this view, BA44 and BA45 would together guide recovery of semantic information and evaluate the recovered information with regards to the criterion appropriate to a given context
[1][2]. A slightly modified account of this view is that activation of BA45 is needed only under controlled semantic retrieval, when strong stimulus-stimulus associations are absent
[3]. For other researchers, BA45's role is not restricted to semantics per se, but to all activities which require task-relevant representations from among competing representations
[4].
External links
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References
1.
2.
3. Wagner, A. D. (2002). Cognitive control and episodic memory: Contributions from prefrontal cortex. L. R. Squire & D. L. Schacter (Eds.). Neuropsychology of Memory (3rd ed.), pp. 174-192. New York: Guilford Press
4.
See also
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Brodmann area
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List of regions in the human brain