The prefrontal cortex is located on the outer front of the neocortex -- the most recent part of the human brain to evolve. It's reasonable to presume that its processing has not yet been perfected.
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The prefrontal cortex plays a large role in "top-down processing", which includes behavior that's informed by internal states (i.e. intention).
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Broadly speaking, this part of the brain is responsible for most of what we care about: goal planning, predicting future outcomes of current activities, differentiating between things like "that' and "other" or "good" and "bad".
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It also modulates the control of social behavior, making sure you behave in socially appropriate ways. You might have an impulse to tell your wife that she looks fat in that dress, and the prefrontal cortext comes to the rescue to say "hey, man, maybe you shouldn't say that".
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The phenomenon of "priming", wherein exposure to a stimulus influences how one responds to a future stimulus, is hypothesized to be the result of processes in the prefrontal cortex.
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Basically, all those things you hate about your personality and bad decision making habits are largely the result of your prefrontal cortex having different values and priorities than yours. Goes to show how much control we have -- which is to say, none at all.
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