Task Interruption in Prospective Memory: A Frontal Lobe Function?

Prospective memory involves remembering an intention to do something as well as remembering the content of the task. It also shares common features with executive skills that are argued to be mediated by the frontal lobes. This paper describes performance on tests of prospective memory by a subject with bilateral frontal lobe infarcts and good retrospective memory but who displayed impairments of planning, initiation and inhibition of ongoing behaviour. The results lend some support to the suggestion that separate neuroanatomical pathways underly retrospective and prospective memory. They also indicate dissociable features within prospective memory that may reflect differences in utilisation of attentional resources and inhibitory control mechanisms.