Nov 15, 2016
The main chemical, or neurotransmitter, that functions in the frontal lobe is dopamine.
They've discovered a genetic component that affects the shape of the dopamine receptors.
These cells in your brain don't actually touch each other. The terminals spit out dopamine, and it floats in the space and hopefully comes in contact with the next cell's dendrites. The dendrites have dopamine-shaped keyholes, and the dopamine should fit in the keyholes perfectly. But they have discovered that a genetic component affects the keyhole shapes, and this make be a root cause for schizophrenia and attention deficits.
If you think about it, the classic symptoms of schizophrenia - paranoia, anxiety, hallucinations, split personalities - most things affected in your prefrontal cortex. So if the dopamine receptors are "broken" in this area of your frontal lobe, you can see how there could be a dysfunction. And this is produced at the genetic level. Science is still learning about this...
Strokes or brain injury in this area of your brain can affect personality. These parts of your brain don't grow back! Some issues related to the speech motor area of the brain (Broca's area). Stuttering (clinically diagnosed) is a misfire in the motor planning part of speech. Aphasia (loss of words) - part of you brain knows the word but you can't seem to get it out of your mouth. Strokes in this area can cause some strange effects in the loss of words.
There is also a type of epilepsy (seizures). Seizures are a misfire or a short in the electrical signals of the brain. Seizures in the frontal lobe can possibly affect memory (epilepsy-related amnesia). Must be diagnosed by a neurologist.
Back in the day, there was a guy named Pheneas Gage who worked on the railroad. An accident involving dynamite and a railroad spike, led to a major head injury and an altered personality!
We rub our forehead when we're trying to remember something because that's where our short-term memory is.
Cynthia doesn't have that many Facebook friends!
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Music Credits: “Radio Martini” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/