>A happily married man, for example, might take up with prostitutes >and
>start bouncing checks.
I'm starting to hate playing Devil's Advocate but I think it's necessary.
Are you certain this person was, in fact, happily married? Did the accident change him emotionally? That would account for the prostitutes and the bounced checks. Not cairing to balance the check book (or remembering to), he decides prostitutes are more fun that his wife, etc.
Here's what I think. Since the frontal lobe is responsible for reasoning, and my hypothesis is it does this through association of connected memories, then when this part of the brain is damaged new associations are made by crossing wires so to speak. This part of the brain still works the same way, but a new philosophy has been programmed in his mind. This could effect him emotionally (by associating emotional memories with other random memories) and cause him to act irrationally (his "social norm" programming has been rewritten by crossed wires). Cognitive therapy would be the easy fix for this. It's long and tedious but all you need to do is create new associations to override the new programming. I think I wrote about this ineptly a few weeks back.
Any way, that's what I'm writing about in my book "Consciousness as a Widely Distributed 'I'". Of course I don't hold any degrees so probably noone will take me seriously but I'm writing it anyway.