[Semiology of behavioral disorders caused by cerebral injury]

Behavioural and emotional changes, often referred to as pseudo-psychiatric symptoms, vary according to lesional sites. The study of different types of frontal syndromes provide the largest part of this chapter, including depression and pseudo-depression, mania, emotional indifference, anosognosia, desinhibition. Temporal lobe syndromes are less frequent, at the exception of various consequences of temporal lobe epilepsy. The Klüver and Bucy syndrome is classical but fortunately rare. The French literature as recently emphasised a special syndrome associating loss of motivation, lack of spontaneous mental activity and reduced emotionality (athymhormic syndrome) specifically associated to bilateral basal ganglia lesions. Finally, the syndrome of alexithymia, often considered but a personality trait may also appear as a consequence of callosal lesions.