Personality Changes with Frontal and Temporal Lobe Injuries

765 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Temporal lobe epilepsy review

In 1978 a 19-year-old Indian girl, Bhagawhandi P., suffering from a malignant brain tumor was admitted to hospice due to her astrocytoma. There are several types of astrocytoma that can form anywhere in the central nervous system (brain & spinal cord). This appeared when she was only seven-years-old. Though it was restricted and not as malignant, allowing her to lead a normal life for ten following years. “She lived life to the full, lived it gratefully…for she knew she had a ‘time bomb’ in her head” (Sacks, 1985). When she was eighteen, the tumor returned with higher levels of malignancy and it was no longer removable. When Bhagawhandi’s tumor returned, it started to expand moving towards the temporal lobe, steroids were given to reduce cerebral edema. The tumor weakened her left hemisphere causing numbness, followed by more frequent and strange seizures. Her previous seizures were grand mal convulsions, which she had on occasions. Though, her newly characterized seizures involved temporal lobe seizures that caused her not to lose consciousness, instead she would look and feel more dreamy (Sacks, 1985). Furthermore, EEG confirmed the temporal lobe seizures corresponded to involuntary reminiscence taking place. Additionally, this vague dreaminess became more concrete as Bhagawhandi encountered what seemed like visions of India. In Bhagawhandi’s dream like sate, she saw visions of landscapes, villages, homes and gardens that she loved and knew as a child. Neurologists in the text inferred these temporal lobe seizures were due to the steroid she was receiving to keep the tumor under control. The massive doses of steroid are possibly causing toxicity within her system, resulting in the dreamy hallucination. However, it was ... ... middle of paper ... ...ders such as dementias. However administering these tests would not have been effective in Bhagawhandi’s situation. The tumor affected her differently where it promoted dreamy hallucinogenic visions of her country. In her specific case, extreme treatments such as biopsy or radiation therapy are needed. Word Count: 893 Works Cited Blumer, D., & Benson, D. (1975). Personality changes with frontal and temporal lesions. In D.F. Benson and F. Blumer, eds. Psychiatric Aspects of Neurologic Disease. New York: Grune & Stratton. Milner, B. (1968). Visual recognition and recall after right temporal lobe excision in man. Neuropsychologia, 6:191-209. Penfield, W. & Roberts, L. (1959). Speech and Brain Mechanisms, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Sacks, O. W. (1985). The man who mistook his wife for a hat and other clinical tales. New York: Summit Books.

Show More
Related

  • A Diagnosis for Mr. Fix-it

    861 Words  | 2 Pages

    The symptoms of a right-hemisphere stroke are very much similar like the symptoms Mr. Fix-it is experiencing. For example, both suggest that functions on the left side of the body are completely neglected; therefore, the left visual section of the body does not respond effectively to stimuli due to the neglect. Damage to the right occipital lobe is very likely. The patient may have experienced some damage to areas 18 and 19 of the occipital lobe. “Damage to these association areas resulted in the patient’s failure to recognize items even when they have been seen before”, such as Mr. Fix-it’s deficiency to recognize geometric shapes (Carlson, 2010). Moreover, the patient could have also experience damage in the frontal lobe, specifically on area 8, in which it could have r...

    Read More

  • School Psychologist-Based Personality Assessment

    683 Words  | 2 Pages

    Applied Neuropsychology: Adult, 21(2), 1-8. Paunonen, S., & Ashton, M. (2001). Big five factors and facets and the prediction of behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81(1), 524-539. Pittenger, D. (2005).

    Read More

  • Argumentative Essay On Phineas Gage

    826 Words  | 2 Pages

    Look only at Gage’s case study for this essay, the frontal lobe and its position in the brain will be the area of focus in this essay. According to Weiten in the tenth edition of Psychology: Themes and Variation, when describing the frontal lobe region, he expounds in great

    Read More

  • Jerome Kagan Understanding The Anxious Mind Summary

    1309 Words  | 3 Pages

    Kagan, however, states that the correlation between brain functioning and disorder is not exactly a straight line, in which it would all depend on the individual’s ability to successfully separate the thoughts and feelings they are experiencing from reality itself, and how well they can overcome the stressors of anxiety. The article goes on to explain Kagans idea that the “persona,” or the outer directed personality as well as the “anima,” an individual’s inner directed thoughts, can cause conflict within an anxious person as one can be controlled while the other cannot. Those who were observed as infants by Kagan were later scanned in an MRI conducted by Dr. Carl Schwartz when they turned 18, and those who were low-reactors as it was observed, had a thinner lining of the prefrontal cortex than those who were high-reactors. The much thicker lining of the cortex of a high-reactive individual supported the fact that the temperament displayed by in these individuals as infants left a mark on those who were “predisposed” to anxiety. Baby 19, however, displayed a much thinner prefrontal cortex despite being high-reactive, in which it was hypothesized that although having a jumpy amygdala she may have lacked a cortex with the capacity to

    Read More

  • The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat Report

    1586 Words  | 4 Pages

    In the following context, the seriousness of the stories and their interpretative breakdowns should only cause a better understanding of how the ever-so-questionable human mind truly works from a professional perspective put into simple words. The story of "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" is quite an interesting story that opens the reader of the book into a world of confusion: Dr. P.'s world. The man, described in the story, is an accomplished doctor, in fact a teacher at an accomplished music school who seems to be fine on the outside, but with further analyses in Dr. Sacks' office, he mistakes his foot for his shoe. This is an astonishing mistake that intrigues the doctor and the reader to know why he mistakes objects for other objects. He then later, as he and his wife are preparing to leave; Dr. P. grabs his wife's head and tries to pull it off as if it were his hat.

    Read More

  • Roger Sperry

    1874 Words  | 4 Pages

    Sperry, R. W. (1982, September 24). Some Effects of Disconnecting the Cerebral Hemispheres. Science Megazine, 217, 1223-1226.

    Read More

  • Affects of Frontal Lobe Damage

    2599 Words  | 6 Pages

    Levine, B. & Stuss, D. (2002). Adult clinical neuropsychology: lessons from studies of      the frontal lobes. Annual Reviews Psychology, 401-433.

    Read More

  • Comparing Two Approaches to Cognitive Psychology

    1413 Words  | 3 Pages

    McCarthy, R., Warrington, E. (1990), Cognitive Neuropsychology: A Clinical Introduction. San Diego: Academic Press Ltd.

    Read More

  • Cancer Essay

    1094 Words  | 3 Pages

    The purpose of this paper is to describe the diagnosis and staging of cancer, complications of cancer, the side effects of the cancer treatment, and methods to lessen the physical and psychological effects of cancer.

    Read More

  • Epilepsy

    4081 Words  | 9 Pages

    Treiman, & M. Trimble (Eds.), Neurobehavioral Problems in Epilepsy (pp. 369-383). New York, Raven Press.

    Read More

  • The Emperor Of All Maladies Essay

    1000 Words  | 2 Pages

    The words in the book are so fluid that readers are capable of visualizing a clear mental picture of his experiences with his patients and the situations they went through dealing with cancer. In addition, this book, notably comes to life after page 304. This is where Mukherjee added illustrations of situations involving cancer dating back to the medieval description of cancer in 2500 BC. There were also illustrations in the 18th century and 19th century of how breast cancer was treated up until the 1990’s when Barbara Bradfield became the first patient to be treated with the drug Herceptin which attacks breast cancer cells. With the supplementation of illustrations in the book, readers can visually see how thing occurred centuries

    Read More

  • Brain Cancer: Different Causes And Treatments Of Brain Cancer

    632 Words  | 2 Pages

    According to SEER Statistics, 23,380 people are estimated to get a brain or nervous system cancer diagnosis. Out of those people, 14,320 people are estimated to die from their brain or nervous system cancer diagnosis (National Cancer Institute). Cancer is a type of dangerous tumor, or a buildup of extra cells that form a mass of tissue, that can be life threatening (National Cancer Institute). The term for a tumor that is cancerous is a malignat tumor, whereas a benign tumor does not contain cancer cells (National Cancer Institute). According to the National Cancer Institute, the causes of brain cancer are unknown, but risk factors include family history and excessive radiaton exposure. Although they are not always due to a brain tumor, comon symptoms include headaches, nausea, speech, hearing, vision, and mood changes, problems with balance and mamories, seizures, and numbness in arms and legs (National Cancer Institute). MRI and CT scans as well as surgical biposies (or the removal of part of the tumor to be examined) are used to diagnose brain cancer (National Cancer Institute). Different types of treatment options include radiation therapy, surgery to remove the tumor, and chemotherapy. According to Charles Davis, MD, PhD and Nitin Tandon, MD of WebMD.com, chemotherapy is “ the use of powerful drugs to kill tumor cells”. There are a few different types of chemotherapy, but all of which bring out the same kinds of side effects. Although the physical side effects of chemotherapy are commonly known, few people know of the emotional toll chemotherapy can take on a patient and his or her family as they go though this process.

    Read More

  • Alternative Cancer Treatment

    1026 Words  | 3 Pages

    Today, many psychologists feel that psychological therapy can give cancer patients’ a longer life. The first to take this stance was Psychiatrist David Spiegel M.D., of Stanford University School of Medicine, in a 1989 study Spiegel gathered patients once a week to discuss there feelings about the cancer and here they received support from other cancer sufferers. “When Spiegel followed up a decade later, he discovered that patients who had participated in the sessions had survived an average of 18 months longer than those in the control group” (Clay,2000). It is felt that if you can tap into a patients mind and help them deal with the cancer by dealing in the mental aspect of it that it will be beneficial to that patient in the long run. Cancer takes a large toll on your body as well as your mind, so if the physical aspect is challenging, the psychological aspect something that a patient should try to excel at like mind over body. Although many cancer patients use this treatment it is not absolutely sure it will lengthen the life span. But the story of Kip Little will beg to differ. Kip, was a cancer patient who had been diagnosed with breast cancer in 1986 and was supposed to be dead a decade ago. After, Kip went through her mastectomy; she met a psychologist at the Ontario Cancer Institute and began working with him and other cancer patients . They patients would gather there to talk about their feelings, practice ways of relaxing and find ways to cope with their pain and any other problems. Then in 1990, cancer returned to Kip, and she was given only a short time to live. Instead of physical treatment, Kip used the relaxing techniques and similar exercises for the mind. Using all these techni...

    Read More

  • Brain Metaastases Research Paper

    613 Words  | 2 Pages

    Brain metastases or BM is a type of brain tumor that can be caused from different types of cancers that are in the body before or after treatment. Around 20-40% of cancer patients and 30-40% of people with regular Metastases can get BM therefore, it affects a lot of people. BM is usually not a huge tumor, it is mostly never longer than four centimeters in diameter for big lesions and no more than three centimeters in smaller lesions (Andrews, D. W.& Scott, C. B. 2005). Doctors can diagnose BM using symptoms and effects, it is also related to cancer, but it does have treatments in which different surgeons use different methods.

    Read More

  • Personality Disorder Essay

    675 Words  | 2 Pages

    Mental illness, today we are surround by a broad array of types of mental illnesses and new discoveries in this field every day. Up till the mid 1800’s there was no speak of personality disorder, in fact there was only two type of mental illness recognized. Those two illnesses as defined by Dr. Sam Vaknin (2010), “”delirium” or “manial”- were depression (melancholy), psychoses, and delusions.” It was later in 1835 when J. C. Pritchard the British Physician working at Bristol Infirmary Hospital published his work titled “Treatise on Insanity and Other Disorder of the Mind” this opened the door to the world of personality disorder. There were many story and changes to his theories and mental illness and it was then when Henry Maudsley in 1885 put theses theories to work and applied to a patient. This form of mental illness has since grown into the many different types of personality disorder that we know today. Like the evolution of the illness itself there has been a significant change in the way this illness is diagnosed and treated.

    Read More

More about Personality Changes with Frontal and Temporal Lobe Injuries

Open Document