Stubbornness and the Cingulate System

I’ve read about a disorder called ODD (Oppositional Defiant Disorder) in Change Your Brain, Change Your Life by Dr D G Amen. I’ve heard of this disorder before, but I didn’t take it seriously. It sounded so bizarre. How could be obstinate be mental disorder, it’s just someone being awkward surely? After reading about half of the book, and seeing the links Dr Amen makes between behavioural patterns and brain activity, and how these can be changed through medication and cognitive behavioural therapy, I was able to accept this disorder as a serious medical condition.

He links ODD to problems in the cingulate system in the brain. This is a section of the brain that runs longitudinally through the middle of the brain. It connects the right and left hemispheres. Problems in this area relate to cognitive inflexibility which can cause; OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder), addictions such as alcoholism, eating disorders, any behaviour that becomes repetitive and that the individual finds difficult to change.

But you don’t have to have a medical disorder to have problems in this area. Dr Amen describes people with cingulate problems and how it affects their personality and how to deal with them. These are the kinds of people whose response to most questions is usually a ‘no‘, they want things done their way, when they say, otherwise they become very anxious and argumentative. Thee people get stuck on an idea and can’t shift their attention onto anything else until what they want gets done. They are people who hold onto grudges, if a situation isn’t resolved to their satisfaction they are unable to let go.

I felt sad while I was reading this chapter on the cingulate system. Everything Dr Amen said reminded me of my mother, she died of breast cancer recently. These aspects of her personality caused lots of stress at times and disagreements between members of the family. I kept thinking, if only I’d read this book sooner, I could have shown it to her, and the others, and we would all have been a lot more patient and forgiving of each other.

It’s not just my mum who had problems in this area. Some of the descriptions also apply to my Dad, my Nan and myself. My mum used to complain how she would sit down with my dad and discuss things with him, and how afterwards he would go and do something different, usually something totally different to what they’d agreed. This caused lots of arguments at home. My Nan can be a frustrating person to try and have a conversation with. She tends to start her conversations with a scripted discourse and won’t let you speak until she’s said everything she wants to, even if you know the answer to her question, or if you want to point out an error. You have to let her get to the end of what she wants to say, even if this means listening to five minutes of extraneous information. I have seen myself do this on occasions.

I think we must be a stubborn family. I’m now wondering if the stubborn parts of my personality could also be due to over activity in the cingulate system. Besides techniques for altering and dealing with the behavioural aspects, Dr Amen talks about medications that can have a dramatic effect on some individuals. These are drugs that increase the level of serotonin in the brain, like Prozac. St John's wort has also been shown to have similar effects. In addition he says there is an amino acid called 1-tryptophan that the body uses to make serotonin which you can get from health food shops. Inositol (a B vitamin) can also help people who are over focused and have trouble stopping repetitive thoughts. I’m not saying anyone should go out and take these, just that there are ways of regulating cingulate activity. It would be interesting though to see if any of these had an effect on myself of members of my family!