In the 1980s rom-com television series Overboard, Goldie Hawn’s spoiled, selfish character suffered a brain injury in a sailing accident.
In addition to losing her memory, the accident also caused her personality to change in a positive way – she became a caring person, worried about others, and no longer valued material things as much as before.
The fact that a brain injury can lead to such personality changes may seem a bit extreme, but let’s look at the real life of “Patient 3534”, a woman in her 70s who had surgery to remove the mass. brain tumor, but the surgery left damage to the front of the brain, on both sides.
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According to the husband, who had been with his wife for 58 years before she underwent surgery, she had a rather “harsh” personality, very difficult and often nagging. After brain surgery, he said she became “happier, more sociable, and more talkative than ever.”
“Patient 3534” is not the only one with such a change. There is now evidence that, at least in a small number of patients, more positive personality changes are a reality, and this has led to a new way of assessing the impact of Brain damage to individual personality.
We have known for a long time that brain damage can change a person’s personality, but literature has mostly focused on deteriorating personality traits.
Consider the famous case of Phineas Gage, a 19th Century railroad worker. Friends said he “wasn’t Gage anymore” after a falling iron bar hit his head, in front of him, in an accident. terrible. The once very intelligent and sharp-witted man became aggressive and impulsive (though according to some accounts, he later overcame these problems and began a new life as a carriage driver). ).
Similar to the story of Gage, there are many modern accounts of patients with frontal brain damage, becoming altered and exhibiting socially inappropriate behavior, in some cases even become mentally ill.
But this negative picture “may only tell part of the story,” according to a recent study published in the journal Neuropsychologia.
A research team led by scientist Marcie King from the University of Iowa found that out of 97 previously healthy patients who suffered permanent damage to a specific area of the brain, 22 of them There are signs showing personality changes in a positive direction. Of the remaining people, 54 people had negative personality changes, and the rest had no changes at all.
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The above observations were made based on asking relatives or close friends, asking them to evaluate 26 different aspects of the patient’s personality before and after the injury.
Previous research has shown ways in which damage to specific areas of the brain can sometimes have positive effects.
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For example, a 2007 study of Vietnam War veterans found that people suffered damage to areas believed to play a role in the development of psychosis. post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (which are areas involved in emotions and decision making) are less likely to develop PTSD.
The same study found that patients with damage to a key area that controls emotions were less likely to develop depression.
However, this is a new study, the first to record many cases of patients changing their personality in a positive direction.
Consider another example, “Patient 2410,” a 30-year-old man who needed surgery after suffering cerebral edema. Both he and his wife said that before his injury, he was hot-tempered and easily angry. Yet after the surgery, he often laughed and joked more and was more approachable.
So what’s going on? How could brain damage lead to such unexpected effects? This seems to have nothing to do with each person’s gender, age, educational background or level of intelligence. Instead, it seems to be related to the person’s level of difficulty, such as short tempers, or other negative attitudes, combined with a particular type of brain damage.
To understand this better, King and his colleagues scanned the brains of all patients. They found that people had more positive personality changes than others if the damaged part was in most of the frontal brain regions, the frontal area, which receives information from the outside. and make decisions.
These methods are, however, only in the exploratory stage, so the authors say caution is needed. That approach only allowed them to discover general patterns between physical damage and the personality changes they produced; Future research will help determine precisely which regions are associated with which specific types of personality changes.
While personality changes in some patients were considered positive, this did not lessen the severity of the brain damage.
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Full recovery from severe brain damage is extremely rare. Even when patients appear to be doing well on the outside, they may still encounter persistent hidden challenges, such as difficulty absorbing new information.
Brain damage can also make a person more vulnerable to diseases such as dementia.
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Therefore, it is surprising that brain damage can lead to positive personality changes.
However, that’s not so outlandish given that brain surgery is sometimes used as a last resort to treat neurological problems, such as with obsessive-compulsive disorder. (obsessive compulsive disorder – OCD).
However, as King and colleagues note, modern techniques are becoming more deliberate, and the goal is often to reduce the overactivity of neural networks. in the brain in certain mental health conditions (for example, there is evidence that depression is associated with overconnectivity between frontal brain regions and neural networks responsible for cognition and emotion). contact.)
The fact that the brain can be deliberately modified in this way gives us a clue that damage to the brain can sometimes lead to beneficial changes.
In fact, some of the neural networks that modern neurosurgery targets are the same parts of the brain that were damaged in the patients with positive personality changes in King’s new study.
The new findings also support research into the nervous system responsible for personality, including the finding that extroverts are less sensitive to mental stimulation, or that People who easily accept other people’s opinions have more active activity in the parts of their brain that control negative emotions.
It is logical to assume that by altering these neural systems, brain damage can sometimes produce paradoxical outcomes – positive personality changes.
However, it is important to reiterate that brain injuries (including “mild” conditions) always need to be treated extremely carefully. Even in the rare cases where patients have clearly positive personality changes, complex difficulties are always part of the treatment picture.
And while it may be exciting to change our personality in a beneficial way, it is important to remember that each person’s personality reflects the true nature of who we are – the patient and his or her family. They will not easily adapt to personal personality changes, even if they are positive changes.
Positive personal change is possible, and it turns out that what happens after brain injury is more complex and surprising than most people assume. number we think.
