Forced collectionism after orbitofrontal damage

Abstract

A collector is a person who collects things on purpose, either as a hobby or business, or for personal satisfaction, e.g., stamp, coin, or art collector. In such instances, the act of collecting things represents voluntary, controlled, goal-directed, selective searching. Pathologic patterns of collecting have been observed following brain damage, particularly frontal lobe damage, ranging from a tendency to grasp (prehension behavior) to an irrepressible need to seize surrounding objects and store them (hoarding behavior). These adnormal behaviors express an excessive adherence to environmental stimuli but in no way express a planned process directed toward specific items. In this article, we describe an unusual pattern of pathologic collecting behavior due to frontal lobe damage: involuntary irrepressible collecting that is goal-directed and selective. The authors report a patient who collected specifically household electrical appliances following a bilateral damage of orbito- and polar-prefrontal cortex. The patient had involuntary irrepressible collecting that was goal-directed and selective. This "forced collectionism" is different from that of the usual collectionism encountered in patients with frontal lobe lesions, as the latter is in no way a planned process directed toward specific items.