60 A Programmer’s Guide to the Mind
In the area of speech, the aspect of brain functioning most thoroughly
studied, research solidly backs up the idea of a back quadrant of the cortex
forming a system with its corresponding frontal quadrant. Speech deficits
are divided into three major categories, depending upon the precise
location of the damage.
If Broca‟s area (in the inferior left frontal cortex) is damaged,
comprehension is preserved and individual words can be remembered, but
the patient loses his ability to form sentences. In other words, as far as
speech is concerned, automatic thought remains intact, but the internal
world is crippled.
On the other hand, if the damage occurs in Wernicke‟s area (in the left
temporal lobe), patients can produce structured sentences, but they are
unable to fill these sentences with meaningful words. Thus both speech and
comprehension become empty, devoid of content. This means that the
internal world is functioning, but the storage shed of specific items has
been smashed.
Finally, if the fibers which interconnect these two regions are destroyed,
the result is conduction aphasia.A Here both speech and comprehension are
fairly normal, but the patient finds it difficult to repeat words or name
objects. It is as if the storage shed and the internal world are still present,
but the mechanism for retrieving information from the storage shed has
become faulty.
Given this basic neurological information, the question of relating
cognitive style to brain region takes on a completely different light. It is
not a question of somehow pasting personality patterns haphazardly onto
brain areas. Rather, our study of personality suggests that there are four
distinctive personality types—the simple styles—which deal with mental
content. Likewise, our research indicates that each of these four styles
combines automatic thought with an internal world. Turning to neurology,
we find that the cortex—the region of the brain which deals with content—
is also divided into eight well-defined regions. Therefore, in order to
connect personality with neurology, we only need to answer a single
question. Is there a correspondence between the eight aspects of
personality demonstrated by the simple styles and the functions of the eight
major regions of the human cortex? I suggest that this answer is yes.
We will finish this first look at neurology by analyzing the connection
between Mercy strategy and brain location. First, it is known that the mind
stores memories of experiences in the right temporal lobe. Neurology has
discovered that if this part is damaged, then long-term non-verbalB memory
is impaired.^2 Thus, we conclude that Mercy automatic thought is located
within the right temporal lobe.
A Aphasia is a medical term for speech deficit.
B Note the use of the term „non-verbal.‟