The TLE Syndrome
TLE is often undiagnosed as subjects often forget a simple but crucial injury to the head, even in childhood, such as falling down stairs, car wrecks, swimming injuries, or a host of other everyday bumps and jolts. The soft temporal lobes are vulnerable to injury any time they bump against the hard skull.
Dr. Daniel Amen says temporal lobe functions include auditory processes, ventral visual stream, auditory input, visual object recognition and classification, long term storage of sensory input. It links with the amygdala which adds the emotional tone to sensory input and memories. The hippocampus helps us navigate and determine where we are in space.
Primary functions of the dominant side (usually the left) include perception of words and processing of language relatd sounds, sequential analysis, increased blood flow during speech perception, processing details, intermediate and long term memory, auditory learning and retrieval of words, visual and auditory processing, and complex memories.
So instabilities or damage to the left lobe create problems such as emotional instability, decreased verbal memory, difficulty categorizing words or pictures, failing to understand words in context, internally and externally driven aggression, dark or violent thoughts, sensitivity to slights and mild paranoia, auditory processing problems, and reading difficulties.
Non-dominant side (usually the right) temporal functions include perception of melodies, pitch and rhythm, social cues, reading facial expressions, and vocal intonation, visual learning, and increased blood flow during tonal memory. Problems include recall of shapes, faces, and tunes; inept social skills, trouble reading social cues and context; decreased attention to visual input; trouble processing music and visual imagery.
Problems in either or both lobes create troubles with memories, fears, confusion, anxiety, abnormal sensory perceptions, visual and auditory hallucinations, spaciness or amnesia, déjà vu and jamais vu, unusual abdominal pain or headaches, religious or moral preoccupation, excessive writing, overemphasis on trivia, and of course seizures.
Dr. Amen sums up the symptomology with ten defining points: 1). Disturbance of auditory sensation and perception; 2). Disturbance of selective attention of auditory and visual input; 3). Disorders of visual perception; 4). Impaired organization and categorization of verbal material; 5). Disturbance of language comprehension; 6). Decreased long term memory; 7). Altered personality and affective development; 8). Altered sexual behavior; 9). Inability to perceive or remember events; 10). Damage to the inferior aspect of the temporal lobe – decreased memory in proportion to tissue damaged.
