Overloaded: How Every Aspect of Your Life is Influenced by Your Brain Chemicals

by Ginny Smith

Many of the areas in the brain network vital for decision-making are found in our frontal lobe. As we have seen in previous chapters, this area is known for controlling our most ‘high-level’ functions, such as reasoning, planning and cognitive control. So it isn’t surprising it is important for making decisions. Damasio and his colleagues were interested in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex because of the difficulties faced by people with damage here, particularly a patient known as EVR. By the time he was 35, EVR was married with two children and had worked his way up to be responsible for all the accounting operations of a home-building firm. He was active in the church and his four younger siblings said he was someone they had always looked up to. But then things began to change. He had problems with his vision, and he began to act differently. It turned out EVR had a brain tumour in both of his frontal lobes, so surgery was scheduled to remove it. After the operation, he seemed to recover well, and was discharged from hospital two weeks later. When it came to follow-up appointments, however, it was clear that all was not well.