What Ruth, Ernie, and Peter have in common is that shortly before these episodes, all three suffered damage to their prefrontal cortex. This is the part of the brain I wrote about before, which, along with the anterior cingulate, basal ganglia, and insula, helps us to organize time and engage in planning, to maintain attention and stick with a task once we’ve started it. The networked brain is not a mass of undifferentiated tissue—damage to discrete regions of it often results in very specific impairments.
