Neuroanatomy and neural circuits for psychiatrists

Meet three patients on one corridor

Bay 1. A 58-year-old man, six months after a motorcycle crash, greets you by name, tells the student she looks tired, and picks up your pen and clicks it. He is warm, tactless, and completely unbothered by any of it.^[5][7]

Bay 2. A 62-year-old woman post-stroke sits facing the window. She is not sad. She is not hallucinating. She simply does not start anything — not conversation, not breakfast, not the physio she agreed to yesterday.^[7][8]

Bay 3. A 44-year-old man plans his discharge out loud in four contradictory versions, cannot hold the second step of a sequence, and keeps returning to the first answer he gave you.^[4][7]

Three patients, three frontal syndromes, three different loops: OFC disinhibited, ACC abulic, DLPFC dysexecutive. Learn them as a corridor and you will never again write "frontal signs" and stop there.^[4][7][8]

References20ShowHide

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