Temporal Mind

Free will becomes a more interesting concept the more you study neurology. How do you differentiate between the biochemical processes and architecture of the mechanics of thought and the spark that gives us life and light? How can you ascribe us complete freedom if any form of brain damage has the capacity to change, at its very root, who you are?

Take the mirror image diseases of Kluver-Bucy and Geschwind syndromes. A normal individual has full control over their engagement with the world. We decide what we think, how we think, and what we do. Or so we suppose. A Kluver-Bucy individual has had their amygdala damaged or removed on each side of the brain. They develop a placid manner, with a tendency towards hypersexuality and an oral fixation. It is bizarre, but this syndrome, typically caused organically by Herpes Simplex Encephalitis, literally domesticates independent human beings. They become disconnected, untied inside their own minds to the world of cause and effect, and willing to be pointed and directed, engaging only in base needs like eating, sleeping, and sex.

Geschwind syndrome is the opposite. Typically induced in epilepsy, Geschwind individuals display one of the most interesting diagnostic traits one might see, "Interpersonal stickiness." They lack the ability to read space in interpersonal relationships, developing theories of interconnectedness and unifying principles that bind them to anyone they meet. A Geschwind sufferer is typically hyposexual, extremely (and rapidly) religious, extremely verbose, and displays a pronounced tendency to write at extreme length about everything. It is a disease of over stimulus, a driven firing of the neurons of the Amygdala leading the individual to draw theories out of connections that only they can see.

This one portion of the brain, if over or understimulated, will drive your personality to opposite extremes. In a world of free will, how do you reconcile the ability of organic damage to make you into a docile sex slave or a hyperactive monk? I can't, at least not comfortably. It seems as though, when we function in that razor thin margin of acceptable, we make our own decisions. But that margin is a conceit we define ourselves. We are only ever a few chemical changes from being someone else, and to me, that is quite terrifying.