As shown in the figure below, the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task is extremely difficult for people who have damage to their frontal lobes. 

During this task, people who have schizophrenia have no increase in their prefrontal activation above resting levels. There are some treatments for schizophrenia which involve increasing this activation of frontal cortex. 

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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. 

Hypofrontality Hypothesis 

This test measures the ability of an individual to develop and maintain a problem-solving strategy that shifts and adapts as the game changes. Put simply, it assesses higher cognitive functions like attention, perseverance, working memory, abstract thinking, and mental flexibility. It consists of sorting a number of cards with images on them according to different facets, and criteria randomly changes without explicit direction of the researcher. Rather, the researcher simply gives affirmative or dismissive indications. A higher score indicates worse performance. 

Wisconsin Card Sorting Task

Breedlove, S. & Watson, N. (2017). Behavioral neuroscience, eighth edition. Oxford University Press.

Behavioral Neuroscience 8th Edition

Wisconsin Card Sorting Task: Difficulties with Frontal Lobe Damage

Wisconsin card Sorting Test. Wisconsin Card Sorting Test - an overview | ScienceDirect Topics. (n.d.). https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/neuroscience/wisconsin-card-sorting-test. 

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