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14 Ibid.

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19 Working in the nineteenth century, Broca showed that damage to what is now called Broca's area of the cerebral cortex leads to loss of the ability to generate speech, and Wernicke demonstrated that damage to a neighbouring area, now named after him, leads to a loss of ability to understand language.

20 The frontal lobes occupy about a third of the total cortical volume, are amongst the latest of our phylogenetic gains and are one of the last of the brain regions to develop in each individual. As with language, it is reasonable to suggest that they mediate characteristic human behaviours. Damage to this part of the cortex produces three behavioural syndromes. Which is manifest depends on the site of damage: an orbitofrontal syndrome, characterized by disinhibition and impulsiveness; a dorsolateral prefrontal syndrome, manifested primarily by executive dysfunction, and a medial frontal syndrome featuring apathy and akinesia.

21 When an electrical impulse reaches the end of the long projection, or axon, of a neuron, it causes the release of neurotransmitter molecules which then cross the small gap, or synaptic cleft, to the next cell and lock on to the relevant receptors on that cell. When they do this, changes take place within the affected second cell which can either enhance the likelihood of an electrical impulse being generated in that neuron (excitation) or make it less likely (inhibition). Various mechanisms clear the transmitter chemical from the synapse so that its effect is transient. Usually it is either destroyed by enzymes in the synaptic cleft, or taken back up into the secreting cell by membrane transporter proteins, and re-used.

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26 Hariri, Ahmad R.et ah, “Serotonin transporter genetic variation and the response of the human amygdala,” Science, Vol. 297, 2002, pp. 400–403. These researchers used a form of functional magnetic resonance imaging to assess subjects’ responses to frightening facial images. They divided people into two groups: those with two long alleles of the 5HTT gene and those with one or two copies of the short form of the gene. The subjects were all healthy but nevertheless there was a clear difference in the responses of the two groups. People with the short form showed greater activity in the amygdala in response to frightening stimuli than those with only the long form. The difference was located in the right amygdala, consistent with the right hemisphere's known role in processing facial images.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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