Mental Disorders

'Damage to Medial Orbitofrontal Cortex'
Dodging punishment may be its own reward. A new study that found an important reward centre in the brain responds similarly to avoiding punishment or gaining a prize.

In other words, knowingly committing an offence, and getting away with it may be as good as winning a prize for some people. If you have a certain kind of brain damage -- specifically to the medial orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) --- you may have a special propensity to want to do that.

This could explain the propensity of certain public figures, politicians, and pundits (particularly right-wing, but not always) to behave as sociopaths who seem to believe that the rules don't apply to them.


'Foreign Accents Syndrome'
After suffering a stroke, a Geordie woman in the UK started speaking in an accent that sounds Jamaican (or by some accounts, eastern European).

Researchers at Oxford University have found that patients with foreign accent syndrome have suffered damage to areas of the brain that affect speech.

The result is often a drawing out or clipping of the vowels that mimic the accent of a particular country, such as Spain or France, even though the sufferer has limited exposure to that accent. The syndrome was first identified during the Second World War when a Norwegian woman suffered shrapnel damage to her brain. She developed a German accent, which led to her being ostracised by her community.