Emotional Intelligence: THE RANGE OF Neurological DISEASES
Emotional Intelligence: Influence of Neurological DISEASES
Since all perceptions, feelings, memories, ideas, and actions are represented in the nervous system, disorders of that system can produce pathology in all domains of human action and experience. Before considering a few disorders of the nervous system in detail, we will take an overview, and consider the range of diseases of the nervous system.
One scientist divided the "higher" functions of the human brain into
three broad domains: arousal, information processing, and planning-verification-action.
Diseases of the nervous system can be assigned to one or more of these
categories. The arousal system is located primarily in the brain stem and the core of
the cerebral hemispheres, and it is responsible for maintaining
a state of appropriate arousal in the organism. The integrity and activity of
this system determine the range of states from alertness through fatigue,
drowsiness, sleep, and coma. This system is often affected in neurological
diseases, either because the disease process directly damages it, or because of
increased pressure in the brain resulting from swelling or a tumor in some
other part of the brain.
The usual result is extreme drowsiness or loss of consciousness.
The information-processing system handles the representation of the
inputs from each of the senses and the integration of information from the
senses, in. the service of building a useful representation of the world. It includes
the parts of the brain that receive inputs from the skin, eats, eyes,
nose, and mouth in the mid-brain and the fore-brain (the primary projection
areas), as well as the parietal and temporal lobes, which are heavily involved
in both processing and integrating this information. In keeping with the general
plan of the nervous system, these areas are toward the back of the
brain. Damage to some areas tends to produce disorders in sensation or
perception, while damage to others (especially the parietal lobes)
tends to produce higher-order disorders, including poor representations
of space inability to recognize meaningful objects such as combs or hammers
(agnosia), or inability to name objects (anomia).
The planning-verification-action system is primarily involved in acting
upon the world. It plans and executes action, and it verifies the outcome of
the action. Its primary neurological location is the frontal lobes. We discuss
symptoms that result from damage to this system in the section on disorders
of movement. Of course, most human activities involve activity of all three
systems.
There is one class of symptoms that does not easily fall within any of the
categories described by Luria. These are changes in emotional response or
personality that may occur after brain damage. One problem is to determine
whether the personality changes are direct effects of the damage, or if they
result from the patient's reaction to the other effects of brain damage, such
as loss of ability to speak.
The case of Phineas Gage, presented below, is a
particularly striking instance of personality change resulting from brain
damage.
Phineas Gage was the twenty-five-year-old foreman of a group of men working
on railroad track in Vermont in 1848. An explosion caused an iron bar, over an
inch in diameter, to pass through the: front of his skull, damaging a large part of the
frontal area of his brain. Miraculously, Gage survived, with no
more than a few moments of loss of consciousness. After recovery, he reapplied
for his job as foreman. His contractors, who regarded him as the most efficient and
capable foreman in their employ previous to his injury considered the change in his
mind so marked that they could not give him his place again. The equilibrium or balance,
so to speak, between his intellectual faculties and animal propensities, seems to have
been destroyed. He is fitful, irreverent, indulging at times in the grossest profanity
(which was not previously his custom), manifesting but little deference for his fellows,
impatient of restraint or advice when it conflicts with his desires, at times perniciously
obstinate, yet capricious and vacillating, devising many plans of future operations,
which are no sooner arranged than they are abandoned in turn for others....
his mind is radically changed, so decidedly that his friends and acquaintances
said he was "no longer Gage." (Harlow, 1868, pp. 339-40)
We cannot explain the relation between Gage's brain damage and the personality
change, but it highlights a possible role for hardware in personality
and emotional intelligence.
For the EI Treatment I recommend click this link:
http://theliberatormethod.com
Since all perceptions, feelings, memories, ideas, and actions are represented in the nervous system, disorders of that system can produce pathology in all domains of human action and experience. Before considering a few disorders of the nervous system in detail, we will take an overview, and consider the range of diseases of the nervous system.
One scientist divided the "higher" functions of the human brain into
three broad domains: arousal, information processing, and planning-verification-action.
Diseases of the nervous system can be assigned to one or more of these
categories. The arousal system is located primarily in the brain stem and the core of
the cerebral hemispheres, and it is responsible for maintaining
a state of appropriate arousal in the organism. The integrity and activity of
this system determine the range of states from alertness through fatigue,
drowsiness, sleep, and coma. This system is often affected in neurological
diseases, either because the disease process directly damages it, or because of
increased pressure in the brain resulting from swelling or a tumor in some
other part of the brain.
The usual result is extreme drowsiness or loss of consciousness.
The information-processing system handles the representation of the
inputs from each of the senses and the integration of information from the
senses, in. the service of building a useful representation of the world. It includes
the parts of the brain that receive inputs from the skin, eats, eyes,
nose, and mouth in the mid-brain and the fore-brain (the primary projection
areas), as well as the parietal and temporal lobes, which are heavily involved
in both processing and integrating this information. In keeping with the general
plan of the nervous system, these areas are toward the back of the
brain. Damage to some areas tends to produce disorders in sensation or
perception, while damage to others (especially the parietal lobes)
tends to produce higher-order disorders, including poor representations
of space inability to recognize meaningful objects such as combs or hammers
(agnosia), or inability to name objects (anomia).
The planning-verification-action system is primarily involved in acting
upon the world. It plans and executes action, and it verifies the outcome of
the action. Its primary neurological location is the frontal lobes. We discuss
symptoms that result from damage to this system in the section on disorders
of movement. Of course, most human activities involve activity of all three
systems.
There is one class of symptoms that does not easily fall within any of the
categories described by Luria. These are changes in emotional response or
personality that may occur after brain damage. One problem is to determine
whether the personality changes are direct effects of the damage, or if they
result from the patient's reaction to the other effects of brain damage, such
as loss of ability to speak.
The case of Phineas Gage, presented below, is a
particularly striking instance of personality change resulting from brain
damage.
Phineas Gage was the twenty-five-year-old foreman of a group of men working
on railroad track in Vermont in 1848. An explosion caused an iron bar, over an
inch in diameter, to pass through the: front of his skull, damaging a large part of the
frontal area of his brain. Miraculously, Gage survived, with no
more than a few moments of loss of consciousness. After recovery, he reapplied
for his job as foreman. His contractors, who regarded him as the most efficient and
capable foreman in their employ previous to his injury considered the change in his
mind so marked that they could not give him his place again. The equilibrium or balance,
so to speak, between his intellectual faculties and animal propensities, seems to have
been destroyed. He is fitful, irreverent, indulging at times in the grossest profanity
(which was not previously his custom), manifesting but little deference for his fellows,
impatient of restraint or advice when it conflicts with his desires, at times perniciously
obstinate, yet capricious and vacillating, devising many plans of future operations,
which are no sooner arranged than they are abandoned in turn for others....
his mind is radically changed, so decidedly that his friends and acquaintances
said he was "no longer Gage." (Harlow, 1868, pp. 339-40)
We cannot explain the relation between Gage's brain damage and the personality
change, but it highlights a possible role for hardware in personality
and emotional intelligence.
For the EI Treatment I recommend click this link:
http://theliberatormethod.com