Frontal (F3, F4, F7, F8): Higher executive functions, attentional gating, decision making, problem solving, memory, social awareness, character, motivation, planning, judgment, immediate and sustained attention, social skills, emotions, empathy, time management, working memory, moral fiber or character, executive planning and initiative, problem identification. Communication with deeper structures and mid-posterior cortex.
Left Hemisphere: Attention and focus, mood, planning and organization, analytic detail, knowledge and skills, later development, language, identifying positive emotion, goal-directed behaviour, repeatedly analysing a situation, thinks sequentially, linguistically, logically
Occipital (O1, Oz, O2): Visual processing, balance, emotional calming visual association cortex, visual processing, procedural memory, dreaming, visual perception, visual field, helps to locate objects in the environment, see colors, recognize drawings, correctly identify objects, reading, writing and spelling
Parietal (P3, Pz, P4): Organization, integration, and synthesis of auditory, visual perception, and kinesthetic inputs, orientation, cognitive processing and attention (sensory integration), “I”, body relaxation and awareness, spatial awareness, emotional calming. A primary hub of the default mode network.
Pre-frontal (Fp1, Fz, Fp2): Executive functioning (goals, inhibits information extraneous to the goal-directed planning process, planning, making decisions) working memory, self-regulation, initiation, social-emotional behaviour in social context, recognition and production of expression of language (prosody), autonomic regulation, attends to internal and external stimuli, determines the amount of attention that will be distributed among competing stimuli, sustained attention, motor control and planning, behavioural inhibition, mental flexibility, concepts of past, present, future, problem solving, personality, attachment, conscience, empathy, learning from experience
Right Hemisphere: Physical calming, affective regulation, sensory integration, social awareness and interaction, creativity, early development, aggression, destructive behaviour, thrill-seeking behaviour, prosody (understanding the emotional content behind words), ‘big picture’ anxiety and hypervigilance, chronic pain, synthesizes information, thinks holistically and spatially, perceives, comprehends and expresses visual and auditory social cues, experiences and expresses emotions
Sensorimotor Strip (C3, Cz, C4): Spatial discrimination, identification of where bodily functions originate, external senses of touch, temperature, pain and the internal senses of joint position, visceral state and pain, conscious control of all skeletal muscle movements, skillful movements and smooth repetitive operations such as typing, playing musical instruments, handwriting, fluid speaking. Literature indicated this region is a hub of the central autonomic network.
Temporal (T3, T4): Regulation of physiology, sleep, autonomic regulation, emotional regulation, interoception (also right insula – right frontal), auditory processing, object and pattern recognition (also occipital), memory (episodic) phonetics, letters to sound, grasping the whole picture vs. sensing everything in fragments, emotional valence and regulation (temper)
Cingulate Cortex (Fz, Cz, Pz): Highly interconnected, may be considered a “connecting hub of emotions, sensation and action.” (Uddin, Nomi, Hebert-Seropian, Ghaziri, & Boucher, 2017) Connective pathways are associated with motivational processing, executive control, working memory, learning and motor control, orienting attention, long term memory and processing emotionally-relevant stimuli.
Anterior: processing emotions, regulating the endocrine and autonomic responses to emotions, cognitive processing, reward-based decision making, processing information from our internal and external states (i.e., emotional state signals from the limbic system) and translating into motor commands.
Posterior: imagination, formation and consolidation of episodic memory
Precuneus (Pz): Coordination of motor behaviour, attentive tracking of moving targets, attention orientation, attention shift between object features, motor imagery, mental imagery in deductive reasoning, music perception, mental navigation, auditory sentence recognition, verbal episodic memory retrieval, memory-related imagery, recognition memory judgements, autobiographical events (recollection), episodic and autobiographical memory retrieval, self-relevant information processing, intentional self-processing, reflective self-awareness, representation of the mental self, perspective taking, experience of agency, social cognition, visuo-spatial perspective taking, emotion and state attribution
Insula (T3, F7, T4, F8): Sensorimotor processing (visceral sensations, autonomic control and interoception, somatic processing and pain, auditory processing, taste, smell, vestibular function), socio-emotional processing (emotional experience, empathy and social cognition, risky decision-making), and cognitive functions (attention and salience processing, speech).