It helps us understand the role of frontal lobes in patients suffering from schizophrenia. It states that people who have schizophrenia have lower metabolic activity in the frontal lobes cortex than their posterior lobes relative to control groups who have equal activation of frontal and posterior cortex (observed by PET scans).

• Other experiments have shown that hypofrontality effect exist only when there are difficult cognitive tasks (which require frontal lobes for accurate performance). One such example is the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task.