A Characteristic Form of Overactive Behaviour in Brain Damaged Children

Abstract

Behaviour disorders resulting from localized lesions of the brain have attracted increasing attention recently. With the rapid progress being made in neurosurgical treatment there is a prospect that their accurate diagnosis may become more than an academic exercise. In the present paper a description will be presented of characteristic overactive behaviour which appears, in the majority of cases, to be due to cortical damage, frequently involving the temporal lobe, and sustained either at the time of birth or in later childhood.The behaviour symptoms exhibited were remarkably constant throughout the series of twenty-five children studied. There was marked restlessness, distractibility and an inability to concentrate for more than a few seconds at a time. The affected children showed an apparent compulsive need to touch every object which they saw, and to suck or chew them. Outbursts of aggressive and irresponsible behaviour occurred frequently, and the patients seemed to be incapable of responding to reprimand or chastisement for longer than a few minutes. The majority suffered from epilepsy or showed other evidence suggesting the presence of cerebral damage on examination.