Conference in French "The hidden life of the brain"
by Prof. Dr. Emer. Alberto Oliveiro

The brain has its hidden life, a set of activities and functions of which we are not fully aware. From simple reflexes to emotion, from memory to decisions, our mind oscillates between conscious and unconscious processes. When executive functions such as memory, decisions and creativity are concerned we must keep in mind that from an evolutionary point of view the development of the prefrontal cortex is paralleled by a new structure of cognitive networks where both systems -the new one such as the prefrontal cortex and the old ones such as the basal ganglia- may be activated in parallel.

Thus, the “old” striatum, one of the structures responsible for cognitive implicit func-tions in mammals, is also involved in explicit functions and interacts with the frontal cortex when new responses and novel strategies are required. For example, structures of the ventral striatum such as the accumbens, are involved in the transition from different cognitive strategies depending on the necessities and the environmental conditions. In many circumstances the striatum takes charge of explicit cognitive functions such as linguistic functions. In mammals, the role of ventral striatum in spatial learning is similar to that involving human declarative (semantic) memory. In more general terms, the accumbens is implied in adapting the behaviour to unstable and undeter-mined situations. Most striatal activities take place at an unconscious level.

References:
Ferretti V., Roullet P., Sargolini F., Rinaldi A., Perri V., Del Fabbro M., Costantini V.J.A. Annese V., Scesa G. De Stefano M.E. Oliverio A., Mele A. Ventral striatal plasticity and spatial memory, Proceedings National Academy of Sciences, 107, 7945-7950, 2010.
Oliverio A Brain and creativity. Progress of Theoretical Physics Suppl.173 66-78, 2008