When I first sat down in Anatomy and Physiology, my brain freaked out. I was sitting there with this huge book, there were notes all over the white board and the instructor had a smirk on his face. My first thought was that this class is going to eat me alive. That was not the case at all actually, and over the next hour an a half of my life, the instructor gave us the secret to the smirk he had. Anatomy and Physiology was not that hard once you learned how to break down what is in front of you. In this article, I will cover the basic make-up of the human brain as a whole. I will then cover the purpose of the frontal lobe, and then I will cover the repercussions of damage to the frontal lobe. Here is my breakdown of the frontal lobe.
Hemisphere:
The brain in general is divided into two hemispheres, These two hemispheres separate the brain into right and left. The right side of the brain controls the left side of the body and the left side of the brain controls the right side of the body.
The brain is then broken down into four lobes. Each of these lobes is located half on the left and half on the right sides of the brain. These lobes are the frontal lobe, the parietal lobe, the occipital lobe and the temporal lobe. Another subdivision of the brain is the brain stem, but I will cover the remaining lobes and the brain stem in other articles.
The Frontal Lobe:
The frontal lobe is one of the most essential lobes in the human brain, It controls many of your everyday life functions. If it is damaged, it can make life very difficult, to impossible. This lobe is right behind your forehead, which makes it the primary portion of your brain to be damaged. It is actually damaged a lot easier and a lot more frequently than any other portion of the human brain. A direct impact to the forehead can cause a lot of damage. Don’t believe me, take your palm and hit it hard on your forehead, you will see some minor distortion of everything you are looking at. This is your brain jarring around in your head. This is of course not your frontal lobe causing the visual change, but imagine an impact to that portion of your forehead at 50 mph. Your brain is essentially soft tissue mushed together. Since the front of your head takes the majority of the impact, causing your frontal lobe to bounce off of your forehead, it can cause serious rapid swelling of the frontal lobe.
The frontal lobe essentially controls your basic everyday life. It controls emotions, reasoning, planning, movement, parts of speech, creativity, judgment, problem solving, and planning. Without the frontal lobe functioning properly, your life would be complete chaos.
Damage to the Frontal Lobe:
Damaging the frontal lobe can be caused by a sudden blow to the head, a car accident, swelling (which can be caused by infection or a great number of other things), or pressure caused from other lobes of the brain swelling.
Damage to the frontal lobe can cause dramatic changes to daily life, including changes in personality. After damage, a person could be completely different than they were before along with the many other changes it can make in everyday life. The most common problems with damage to this lobe are lack of motor function, problem solving, spontaneity, memory loss, language loss, loss of initiation, judgment, impulse control, and change in social and sexual behavior (Levin et al., 1987).
Even though the frontal lobe has its own function, it has minor control of the other lobes. Damage to the frontal lobe can cause damage and changes to the other lobes as well. There can also be serious sensory issues caused by this damage because of lack of impulses being sent back and forth through the brain and lack of sensation or over abundance of sensation.
Unfortunately, once brain cells are damaged, there is not much that medical science can do for the damage. It is one of those things that medicine cannot make better at this time, as much as they would like to.
Levin et al. (1987). Magnetic resonance imaging and computerized tomography in relation to the neurobehavioral sequelae of mild and moderate head injuries. Journal of Neurosurgery, 66, 706-713.