Salutary change after frontal brain trauma

Adverse behavioral effects of frontal traumatic brain injury are well-known. Patients may suffer changes in personality ranging from disinhibition to apathy. Beneficial effects of traumatic brain injury are rarely described. We report three cases of patients who sustained frontal traumatic brain injury, one of whose social phobia resolved and the other two of whom had an improvement in impulsive and antisocial behavior. In one case the brain injury may have caused disinhibition of an inhibited state; in the other cases disinhibition associated with impulsivity was replaced by a more restrained state. This adds to the data on the integrative role of the frontal lobes in varied psychopathologic conditions.