The emotionless man

[Ruptga]

Have any of you ever heard the case where someone with a brain injury had no apparant emotion? I think the guy had severe lesions to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, but google isn't being nearly as helpful here as I would like.

 

[Cogman]

Are you thinking of a lobotomy?

 

[Ruptga]

I'm not talking about a procedure, I'm looking for a specific case where someone had something wrong with their brain and one of the effects of that disorder, disease, or injury was that they effectively had no emotions.

One of my college professors has mentioned this case when talking about the balance of emotive and logical processes in normal peoples' lives, apparantly this mystery man had a really hard time making decisions simply because he had no emotive drives.

I did manage to find this, but I'm trying to see if there was ever any one case of this that was so bad that they had no emotion.

 

[CTho9305]

Anhedonia is probably related.

 

[presidentender]

Phineas Gage is the textbook case.

 

[Foxery]

Phineas Gage is related, but different - his personality radically changed after severe brain damage, but he was still mostly functional. (He went from a quiet, cautious man to a loud party animal.)

I haven't heard of a specific case like the OP, but there have been some pretty interesting (/disturbing) effects created by brain damage over the years, along the lines of messing up the person's ability to "respond appropriately" to various situations.

 

[BladeVenom]

Yes, you can find a lot of cases were brain injury altered personality. I haven't heard of one were a person became emotionless, but otherwise perfectly functional.

 

[Ruptga]

Originally posted by: BladeVenom
Yes, you can find a lot of cases were brain injury altered personality. I haven't heard of one were a person became emotionless, but otherwise perfectly functional.

That's what I'm finding too, looks like my professer might've just had a really weird dream or something, which sucks because we could learn a lot from such a person if they actually existed.

 

[bobsmith1492]

I have no emotions; does that count?

 

[Ruptga]

No it doesn't, and I reaaaaally doubt you really have no emotive drives

 

[Ticky]

I've heard of this to. Someone with very specific and local damage, who had no emotions. I don't remember the name, but I do remember him being a married man with a couple kids. I think he came up on a Discovery Channel special.

 

[DrPizza]

Look for the animals don't have emotions thread. I linked to something in that thread that I found in scholar.google that implies that it's more common than thought that people lose the ability to recognize emotions after a TBI.

 

[octopus41092]

Originally posted by: bobsmith1492
I have no emotions; does that count?

So, you wouldn't get mad if I kicked you in the nuts?

Anyways, I think something about the Corpus Callosum is used to let the left and right hemisphere communicate and if that was severed I think it would have some effect on the emotions. I think I saw a study once that showed that patients with it cut have difficulty expressing emotions or something like that. Anyways it was a while ago so I'm not entirely sure on the accuracy of that.

 

[imported_Champ]

Dexter?

 

[panipoori]

Dexter does have emotions, very little but he has them

 

[tomcat2200]

Aren't you asking about sociopath profiles? I do know a number of people are born that way, but I have heard of no instances where an accident, induced the condition. Considering its prevalence in society in general, I doubt anyone is tracking it in that way. It just isn't that unique of a characteristic.

 

[LumbergTech]

Originally posted by: tomcat2200
Aren't you asking about sociopath profiles? I do know a number of people are born that way, but I have heard of no instances where an accident, induced the condition. Considering its prevalence in society in general, I doubt anyone is tracking it in that way. It just isn't that unique of a characteristic.

what hes talking about is quite unique..no emotions to drive your behaviors..

this isnt just about someone who cant relate to or understand other people, they cant even be motivated by their emotions to avoid danger for instance ..they would have to find another way to avoid it

 

[Stiganator]

HJ? He was a guy who had no long term memory. I don't recall the emotionless guy though.

 

[JTsyo]

alexithymia