Comments by "Rob Fraser" (@krashd) on "Vomiting Up Brain? A Fungus in his Skull? The Gruesome Story of Phineas Gage | Well, I Never" video.

@feralmagick7177 A glass tank would be the apt comparison, a glass cannon would be a frail person who hits hard but humans are frail beings who happen to be incredibly durable at the same time, a paradox.
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@Amy_the_Lizard Trauma would play a part but Adam is right, the frontal lobes are where a person's personality lives, it is the part of the brain that can be thought of as housing the mind. The rest of the brain deals with memory storage, senses, communicating, motor skills, etc but the frontal lobes maketh the person, one side housing the logical part of you and the other the creative part. Damage one side and you can become more serious, damage the other and you can become more playful, damage both and you become an automaton who can look after themselves and follow instructions but have no personality - like an extreme form of autism.
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@Amy_the_Lizard Yeah, there's no line-drawn boundaries in the brain that state that a specific region can only do a specific task, because the brain has an elasticity that allows overlap and evolution but it is widely believed that the frontal lobes are geared for different personality processes. Also although the amygdala and hippocampus can have a bearing on a person's mentality those structures basically control your mood and not your personality, the midbrain is a sort of filter or junction whereby sensory information from the brain stem is collected and passed on to the cerebrum and the midbrain translates those signals into the likes of fear, anxiety and joy. These emotions can affect your decisions and shape your personality to a degree through cognitive habits but the sort of person you are is still defined by the frontal lobes.
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@Heavyhead2k1 If a TBI gets anywhere near the amygdala then a change in personality is the least of someone's problems, any damage to the midbrain would wreck a person and leave them either severely handicapped or permanently comatose.
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