NESC 2470 Lecture Notes - Lecture 14: Libido, Temporal Lobe, Lobotomy
10 May 2018
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Emotion II
o Phineas Gage had an unfortunate accident that lead to personality changes that caused
his lack of ability to regulate his emotions
o Darwin Theory of emotion - consistency of emotion throughout the animal kingdom
o Discovery of sham rage -where rage is created
o Was a railway forman, at 24 he suffered from an accident with a tamping iron. He was
using it to tamp explosives and they believe it started a spark and blew up the
explosives and the tamping iron went through his cheek and through the frontal lobe
o And the prefrontal cortex which altered his personality
o Suffered from infections in the brain, lost sight in one eye and a personality change
o Thus, this must be the seat of personality change
o He was disrespectful, profaine, and easily frustrated - which showed the lack of
ability to regulate his emotions
o It leads to a lot of interesting behaviours, some of which were related to emotion
o Decreased fear and aggression
o They couldn't connect their visual perception with meaning
o Increased interst in sex
o In humans, when we lesion the temporal lobe, we see similar things
o They show flattened emotion and hypersexuality
o Thus, is the amygdala responsible for our sex drive?
o The appearance of different parts of the amygdala change shape from posterior to
anterior
o The central nucleus shifts in position
o The main pathway that goes through the amygdala goes to the hypothalamus which
coordinates our instinct behaviour
o Controlling the autonomic nervous system
o Main control centre for making decisions on fight or flight and rest and digest
o Main pathway that goes from the amygdala to the hypothalamus is called the
amygdala fugal pathway
o Remember fugal means away
o Aniamls: bilateral amygdalectomy decrease fear and aggression
o Similar to Kluver- Buy syndrome
o Researchers suggest that when you take out the temporal lobe, this one
characteristic is monitored by the amygdala
o Humans: impaired recognition of emotional expressions
o Especially fear
o Difficult in humans because it is not a common place to have damage
o S.M case study: instability to recognize fear in facial expressions
o Urbach Wiethe disease - this results in thickening of the skin and damage to both
amygdala
o However, this is a host to a whole bunch of symptoms and characteristics
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