I don't think damage to the frontal lobe should damage your emotions that much...that's amygdala-basal ganglia region, which is deeper than the frontal lobe. It could have affected your ability to reason, problems solve, plan, etc..., which certainly may have altered your personality. I imagine you probably had deeper damage if your emotions are affected.
Although the frontal lobe
is associated with appraising situations, so that could have played a part in your emotion issues...
Quotepeople hear bipolar, schizophrenia, borderline, etc and jump to conclusions--dehumanized and made into a clinical definition rather than person.
That's not really psychiatrists' fault...
Quote
antipsychotics lower brain activity and are known to cause feelings of soullessness, yet are prescribed for mundane things like insomnia and depression, in addition to the severely ill where it might actually be the best option. neuroleptic candy, sandy.
They block dopamine receptors because that's one of the most commonly held models of schizophrenia (that it's due to excess dopamine). So in a sense yes, they
do lower brain activity, but it was already overactive.
I've never heard about the feelings of soullessness before, but then again I've never had first hand experience with any of these illnesses, so I can't really comment. I seem to recall something like that from "A Beautiful Mind", and I may have heard it in one of my neuroscience classes, but I have forgotten it.
The problem with many of the treatments for mental illnesses that exist today is twofold: Firstly, for many of them we don't know exactly how they arise and what the exact problems are (what systems are affected); secondly and consequently, the treatments that are available are simplistic and only treat one system, when many interconnected systems are (almost definitely) involved.
For example, the typical treatment for depression is Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs). I won't go into how they work, but they act to increase the action of Serotonin. These take weeks to show symptom alleviation, and for some people (depending on the type of depression) they may not even work. However, it had later been found out that Norepinephrine also is involved. So SNRIs (which act on both serotonin and norepinphrine) are also used. They're usually more effective, as they act on more systems. But we also know that a substance called Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF) is reduced in depressed patients (this is involved in the growth and survival of new neurons and the strengthening of synapses, and is therefore essential for learning and memory). So these illnesses are complex, and we don't even understand them fully yet. Plus, we're unable to be specific in where the drugs act in the brain (how do you target one part of the brain only?), and even if we could find a drug that works, it might be impossible in humans as it may be too large to cross the blood brain barrier.
So it's complex as all f**k, it's an absolutely brilliant organ, and the slow progress in the development of medications for these illnesses is a testament to this complexity.
