Psychological changes in organic brain lesions and ablations.

Abstract

The main objective of the present review is to present the studies of the mental disturbances associated with brain disorders in which psychologic test techniques have been utilized. These brain disorders include brain trauma, brain tumors, brain disease, and the ablation of brain tissue. The different cerebral areas are considered separately. Significant conclusions are as follows: The mental symptoms which occur in pathology of the frontal and temporal regions are essentially the same. These manifestations include dis-tractibility of attention, loss of spontaneity, alterations in the general intellectual deterioration, memory loss, and changes in mood tone and psychomotor tempo. These symptoms are not reported in cases of parietal and occipital brain damage. In the former, the symptoms are primarily psychophysic defects while the latter situation gives rise to disturbances mainly affecting the visual sphere. Pre-operative and postoperative test comparisons upon patients undergoing excision of frontal tissue yield no gross lowering in the intelligence test scores following brain surgery. However, with the development and application of specialized psycholgic test procedures to this general problem, certain subtle but definite mental defects emerge. 130 studies are listed.