Your temporal lobes are found right around your temples, above the ears. They’re essentially involved in accessing memories, hearing, language and perception of both visual and auditory stimuli, and so damage to your temporal lobes can have a big impact on your mental health and overall wellbeing.
Primarily, there are eight signs and signifiers that you have sustained damage to your temporal lobes. Firstly, your auditory sensation and perception may have been disrupted. This means that you may or may not be able to hear what others may hear and when it comes to music, you may be tone-deaf. Secondly, you may experience a disturbance of visual perception, meaning that you are unable to know what you are seeing. For example, you may come to a stop sign and, even though you see it, you might not slow down until the very last-minute.
The third sign that your temporal lobes have been damaged is a disruption of selective attention, like when there are too many stimuli. For example, if there is too much noise or too many conversations going on at once, or you try to find the cereal you want in a supermarket aisle full of eye-catching boxes, you can feel overwhelmed and show signs of anxiety. Fourth on this list is a disruption with language comprehension. This means that someone needs to explain simple instructions to you several times, or you might have trouble listening to lectures or reading a book.
The next issue resulting from temporal lobe damage are problems resulting from organising and cataloguing verbal material. As with the stop sign, if you have damaged this part of your temporal lobe, you may hear words, understand their meanings, and yet not comprehend the information being relayed. The sixth sign of damage is impaired long-term memory, in which you have no recollection of things from years back.
The seventh problem as a result of injury to the temporal lobes is an altered personality and expression of emotion and feelings. This means that you don’t or can’t express emotions when speaking, not showing inflection or excitement when relaying news, for example. Finally, changed sexual behaviour can result from damage to your temporal lobes. You may find that you go from being very shy to very promiscuous or vice-versa, but there is probably a larger number of survivors of traumatic brain injuries who report diminished sexuality.
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