What would happen upon removal of the temporal lobe?
1 Answer
Loss of the functions associated with this lobe are expected.
Explanation:
- "Some physicians still consider temporal lobectomy an extreme procedure, citing the risks of side effects, including loss of memory, visual disturbances, and emotional change, associated with the removal of brain tissue" (http://www.columbianeurosurgery.org/conditions/temporal-lobe-epilepsy/)
Clinical significance
- Unilateral temporal lesion
- Contralateral homonymous upper quadrantanopia (sector anopsia)
- Complex hallucinations (smell, sound, vision, memory)
- Dominant hemisphere
- Receptive aphasia
- Wernicke's aphasia
- Anomic aphasia
- Dyslexia
- Impaired verbal memory
- Word agnosia, word deafness
- Non-dominant hemisphere
- Impaired non-verbal memory
- Impaired musical skills
- Prosopagnosia
- Bitemporal lesions (additional features)
- Deafness
- Apathy (affective indifference)
- Impaired learning and memory
- Amnesia, Korsakoff syndrome, Klüver–Bucy syndrome
Damage
Individuals who suffer from medial temporal lobe damage have a difficult time recalling visual stimuli. This neurotransmission deficit is due, not to lacking perception of visual stimuli but, to lacking perception of interpretation.[8] The most common symptom of inferior temporal lobe damage is visual agnosia, which involves impairment in the identification of familiar objects. Another less common type of inferior temporal lobe damage is prosopagnosia which is an impairment in the recognition of faces and distinction of unique individual facial features
Damage specifically to the anterior portion of the left temporal lobe can cause savant syndrome.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporal_lobe#Unilateral_temporal_lesion)