10.20
The prefrontal cortex is the frontal lobes of the brain, which you can think of as the good brain. It let’s us remember that something is hot and our past experience touching something hot was not a good one. It is the controller.
The most typical psychological term for functions carried out by the pre-frontal cortex area is executive function. Executive function relates to abilities to differentiate among conflicting thoughts, determine good and bad, better and best, same and different, future consequences of current activities, working toward a defined goal, prediction of outcomes, expectation based on actions, and social "control" (the ability to suppress urges that, if not suppressed, could lead to socially-unacceptable outcomes).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prefrontal_cortex
The amygdala is located at deep within the brain near the spinal cord. You can think of the amygdala as the bad brain. The amygdala is our emotional brain. It is responsible for your impulse responses. Such as hunger, sex, love, hate, etc…
As early as 1888, rhesus monkeys with a lesioned temporal cortex (including the amygdala) were observed to have significant social and emotional deficits. Heinrich Klüver and Paul Bucy later expanded upon this same observation by showing that large lesions to the anterior temporal lobe produced noticeable changes, including overreaction to all objects, hypoemotionality, loss of fear, hypersexuality, and hyperorality, a condition in which inappropriate objects are placed in the mouth. Some monkeys also displayed an inability to recognize familiar objects and would approach animate and inanimate objects indiscriminately, exhibiting a loss of fear towards the experimenters. This behavioral disorder was later named Klüver-Bucy syndrome accordingly.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amygdala
This ongoing struggle in the brain between the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex is a struggle between reason vs. desire, right vs. wrong, good vs. evil.
