Glossary
Temporal Lobe
What is the temporal lobe?
The temporal lobe is one of the four main lobes of the cerebral cortex. There is one on each side of the brain, near the ears. Its regions contribute to hearing, memory, language, and emotional processing.
Functions of the temporal lobe
Auditory processing
The primary auditory cortex processes features of sound. Auditory information reaches it through pathways that include the auditory nerve and thalamus.
Memory formation
The hippocampus, in the medial temporal lobe, is important for forming new episodic and other declarative memories, as well as spatial processing. These include memories of events and facts.
Language comprehension
Wernicke's area is a historical label for posterior temporal language regions. Understanding language depends on a broader network that also includes parietal and frontal regions.
Emotion and social processing
The amygdala, an almond-shaped structure in the medial temporal lobe, helps process emotionally significant information and contributes to emotional memory.
Associated disorders
- Temporal lobe epilepsy involves seizures originating in temporal regions. Their effects depend on the areas involved and can include changes in awareness, perception, or emotion.
- Amnesia can follow damage to the hippocampus or related memory structures. Anterograde amnesia affects the formation of new memories; retrograde amnesia affects recall of earlier ones.
- Wernicke's aphasia can involve fluent speech with impaired meaning and difficulty understanding language. It is associated with damage to a broader language network, often including temporal regions, rather than one universally agreed small area.
Why it matters
The temporal lobe contains several different systems. The regions and connections affected help explain why temporal damage can cause very different problems.