A Plain English Guide to the Areas of the Brain and How an Injury to Them Can Affect You

Name: Holland & Usry, P.A.
Telephone: (864) 582-0416
Rating: 4.9

A Plain English Guide to the Areas of the Brain and How an Injury to Them Can Affect You

One of the most frightening things about traumatic brain injury (TBI) is that it shows us how little we know about the brain. While busy, concerned medical staff try to explain what’s damaged, they can lose you in a sea of medical terms.

To help out traumatic brain injury survivors and their families, here’s a list of the major parts of the brain and how injury from an accident can affect them. We got this info from brainline.org, which is a great resource for injury victims.

If your brain injury resulted from a South Carolina accident or workers’ comp case, you need to protect your legal rights because you likely have a lot to lose, and the insurance company won’t help you. Get FREE INFO with no obligation from an experienced Spartanburg accident injury and workers’ comp attorney. Call toll free at (864) 582-0416 or fill out a Get Help Now form.

Frontal Lobes

As you might expect, the frontal lobes are right behind the forehead. It’s the largest part of the brain. They often get injured due to their location at the front of the skull, near rough, bony skull ridges. The frontal lobe handles:

Planning and organizing
Problem solving and decision making
Memory and attention
Controlling behavior, emotions, and impulses
Speech and language

A frontal lobe injury can affect those functions.

Temporal Lobes

These are on either side of the brain, at the level of your ears, stretching from around the eyes to almost the back of the skull. The temporal lobes handle:

Hearing
Understanding and making speech
Memory

Damage to these areas can affect the ability to hear, speak, and understand words, or even recognize a familiar person’s face.

Parietal Lobes

They are located behind the frontal lobe on the top back of the brain. The parietal lobes:

Contain the “primary sensory cortex,” controlling senses like touch, hot/cold, and pain
Orient us on direction—like which way is up
Make us aware of where our body parts are, so we don’t bump into things when we walk, for instance

Injury to the parietal lobes can make it impossible to locate parts of your body or even recognize them.

Occipital Lobe

This is located at the lower back of the brain. It helps us see and recognize shapes and colors. Injury to this area can cause problems with sight, including distortions of size, color, and shape.

Cerebellum

This area of the lower back of the brain controls:

Balance
Movement
Coordination
The ability to stand upright

An injured cerebellum can cause loss of these functions, including lost muscle tone and an inability to walk properly.

Hypothalamus

This is a tiny area inside the midbrain helping us:

Regulate body temperature
Recognize hunger or thirst
Experience moods
Release and regulate hormones

Damage to this area can affect these functions, including sex drive, sleep, and emotions.

If you suspect that you or a loved one have suffered a brain injury, contact our Spartanburg injury lawyers to determine your legal situation. You can call our office at (864) 582-0416 today.

Pituitary Gland

Located within the brain behind the eyes, the pituitary gland is important to our overall wellbeing and handles hormone release and regulation.

An injured pituitary gland may be revealed in:

Stunted growth in children
Blood pressure problems
Fatigue
Depression
Diminished sex drive
Body temperature
Impaired ability to sense pain

Amygdala

This is located in the front part of the temporal lobes. It’s involved in:

Creating and storing information related to emotional events
Long-term memory
Learning from pleasure
Recognizing danger or fear

An injured amygdala can impair these functions. It may damage memory, learning, emotional sensitivity, and can cause depression and anxiety.

Hippocampus

This is located in the middle of the temporal lobes. It’s involved in:

Creating and retaining memory
Orienting us to our surroundings
Helping us find our way around

Damage to the hippocampus can harm these functions, plus impair mood and create confusion and disorientation.

Brain Stem

This is located at the bottom of the brain. It’s made of three parts: the midbrain, pons, and medulla. It maintains basic involuntary functions necessary to survive, like:

Breathing
Heart rate
Pressure
Swallowing

It’s also involved in alertness and sensation. A damaged brain stem can be highly threatening, even lethal.

Simplify the Legal Part, Too

If you or someone you love has a brain injury, your life is complicated and confusing enough. Confronting the legal and insurance system on your own will only make it worse. Insurance companies make a lot of money taking advantage of people like you, who just want to get one more problem behind them so they can move to the next one.

This is a problem that needs to be dealt with carefully. A cheap settlement can have lifelong implications you will regret forever, especially if you have enormous medical bills to pay now and expect more brain injury care in the future, plus lost income you really need to get back. Having the right legal advisor can be the difference between financial ruin and peace of mind.