Dr. Mark D'Esposito

Yeah, I think it's, you know, we think about it as it's, you know, the frontal cortex allows us to take thought and move it towards action.

And there's this disconnect between the knowledge and action and the separation of action from knowledge.

And I guess I can reflect on my patients, you know, when I've seen a lot of patients with damage all over the brain and all of the families of patients who have frontal lobe injury always say the same thing.

They're just no longer that person.

They're no longer...

my spouse are no longer my best friend, they're no longer my father.

There's something, they can't put it into words, but they're not them anymore.

There's something that's changed.

Whereas if you talk to a patient with Broca's aphasia who has this inability to speak, they can't get any words out.

You know, this is a devastating problem.

They're still the same person.

their personality hasn't changed.

They feel the same person.

They just can't speak.

The way they get around in the world is different.

Or if you take a patient with prosopagnosic, which is this inability to recognize faces, of course, the way they navigate around the world is difficult.

And it's not the same, but they're still the same person.

So there's something really special about the frontal cortex that allows us to be

as you said, sort of who we are.

And that's the difficult part, like how does the frontal lobes allow us to sort of take who we are and translate that into knowledge?