The Nocturnal Brain: Nightmares, Neuroscience, and the Secret World of Sleep

by Guy Leschziner

Damage to the frontal lobes, whether through tumour, types of dementia or tamping iron, is known to cause personality change, and suggests that the frontal lobes have a fundamental role in our social behaviour and planning.

The brains of people with these disorders, when studied under a microscope, show deposits of a protein called alpha-synuclein. When this protein is deposited in the basal ganglia, an area deep in the brain fundamental to the control of movement, it causes the overt features of Parkinson’s disease that are most familiar to us, like tremor, slow movement and walking difficulties.

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