Question: which part of the brain keeps your personality

Emily Robinson answered on 15 Jun 2011:

What a brilliant question!

Your personality lies mainly in your frontal lobe of your cerebral hemispheres (the two large areas on each side of your brain at the front. See link for image of where this is in the brain). http://www.neuroskills.com/tbi/bfrontal.shtml

When we think about the differences between human and animal brains it is quite striking the differences of the cerebral hemispheres. The human brain is folded to get the best surface area to volume ratio of grey matter, whereas the brains of lower animals (eg. rodents) are not folded at all. This is because humans have greatly increased areas of their brain like to frontal lobe so that we can think and have a personality in ways which animals can’t.
In the picture notice how much of the cat and rat brain is taken up by sensory and motor areas compared to the human brain. As you can see the area left at the front of the human brain is much bigger.