What happens to a person when the anterior cingulate cortex is damaged on both sides? · Grey Matter

The anterior cingulate cortex, with the medial prefrontal cortex around it, supplies the drive to act: it signals that something matters enough to spend effort on.

What happens to a person when the anterior cingulate cortex is damaged on both sides?

The anterior cingulate cortex, with the medial prefrontal cortex around it, supplies the drive to act: it signals that something matters enough to spend effort on. When it is destroyed on both sides, usually by a stroke of both anterior cerebral arteries or a tumour, patients become apathetic, and in severe cases develop akinetic mutism: awake, following people with their eyes, not paralysed, yet neither moving nor speaking unless strongly prompted. Smaller lesions, including those made surgically for chronic pain, reduce the unpleasantness of pain and the reaction to errors more than the ability to act.