passingham has transformed our view of the frontal lobes by his work on the monkey and human brain. he carried out early classical studies on the prefrontal cortex in primates, and pioneered our understanding of the premotor and supplementary motor cortex. together with his later work using brain imaging in humans, he has changed our view of the fundamental role of the prefrontal cortex. he was at the forefront of extending the use of brain imaging from anatomical ‘mapping’ into physiology. he demonstrated general principles by which the system works as a whole, for example, that the contribution of an area to a task is not static, and that the same area can interact dynamically with one subsystem in one context and with another subsystem in another context.