Why a Personality Change?
What do we know about the frontal lobe? We know that the
frontal lobe is the one responsible to do planning, organizing, sequencing, and
helps control our personality. Why is it important that we have a healthy
frontal lobe? What if I told you that a frontal lobe injury could cause us to
become a different person and lose our judgment. Like in this video by Woody
Igou, he describes the function of a damaged frontal lobe, what behavior
changes a person can have, and what type of consequences these behavior
changes can cause. After watching this video I found out how important the
frontal lobe is for our personality because it helps us in complex social
interactions and it filters our impulsive behaviors by controlling our
expressive speech. After a brain injury such as in an accident, stroke or having
a tumor in the frontal lobe a person may go through some subtle or drastic
personality changes. They are not the same person they “used to be”, they have
become someone else these are words that family members or caregivers have
described someone after a brain injury. Personality changes can be dramatic
they can be an exaggeration of the person’s pre-injury personality that has intensified.
For example, like in this video provided, the person used to be kind, laid back,
easy going and then for some reason he became easily angered, agitated, and
aggressive. The reason for his personality change was due to the fact the he
had a benign tumor compressing his frontal lobe. So our personality makes us
who we are and if you notice that you are becoming a total different person
get your brain checked.
I thought it was interesting that damage to the frontal lobe is called "amputation of the soul" because that brings to mind a lot of questions about the relationship between our mind and body. It's really sad that this kind of damage can change who you are. However, Phineas Gage was very lucky that the railroad spike going through his head only changed his personality. It could have paralyzed or even killed him! Brain damage is very weird because no one can know exactly what's going to happen! In fact, people were only able to map out the brain by comparing the effects of lesions in certain areas!
ReplyDeleteI've heard about this before, and it makes me question myself because when I was younger, my father and I were playing baseball and the ball hit me in the head by accident (insert crying and dad patting me on the back saying, "Go get a steak" even though we didn't have any). Most of my childhood is a blur, I only recall painful moments and hardly happy ones. I know when I was younger i.e. around 5th grade, I used to be really social, but I can't remember the last time I didn't have trouble talking to people. I get really uncomfortable in crowds and anxious when I have to do a presentation. It's just really overwhelming...and when I was a kid I was a cheerleader; I wanted to be in the spot light. I don't know if I should attribute my behavior then to lack of attention or as of now I have an affliction to any attention.
ReplyDeleteWow, I didn’t know that damage to our frontal lobe would cause someone’s personality to change. Your post was something that I’d never know, and it interests me that someone could go through such drastic changes and become someone totally different than who they were before from an injury to their frontal lobe. I’ll definitely make sure to get myself checked if my personality starts changing.
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