Oh, that would make for a dark back story. Wolverine-esq. Also could lead to other side effects if done poorly, or if those brain regions have multiple functions.

@PyRulez I was thinking more of Peter Watts' Rifters from Starfish, Maelstrom, and βehemoth who they did repeated brain surgery on to convince them that they had been abused as children but there are parallels with Wolverine too.

Also, you could have a series of people who were "failed attempts", which would be interesting.

@PyRulez Yeah failures and accidents are often the most interesting parts of science.

Also, do you have a source for peopling getting divorced from their emotional response to pain?

@PyRulez Yeah have a look at "Psychological and neural mechanisms of the affective dimension of pain" from Science. 288 (5472): 1769–72. It's reference 30 for the wikipedia article I linked.

Cool, thank you. P.S. afk, off to find sketchy brain surgeon in different jurisdiction

Careful with brain damage though, they often have nasty unexpected side-effects down the line. I have heard about a case where this procedure was used - with success - on a terminally ill patient as last-ditch pain mitigation as no other had worked. But apparently it also causes dementia a few years later, which is why it would never be applied on a non-terminally ill patient.

Then again, maybe Greg (or whoever did it to him) only needs a few years to attain his goals, and doesn't care if dementia awaits him after that...

@Eth I actually first heard about the technique being used on completely healthy people, spies in fact, as a measure to prevent them from being successfully tortured. The side effects that stopped that practice was that it caused sociopathic tendencies but worse it caused people to ignore injuries they really really shouldn't have, a bit like leprosy only semi-deliberate. That may be a Cold War myth though.

The story of the woman who can't feel fear is pertinent here(washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2015/01/‌​20/…). It comes with a very real downside though; an impaired sense of danger leads to her being subject to violent crime far more than an average person.

So what then exactly is necessary to make the "ideal" willpower person, that is, one that is capable of finishing anything they set their mind to or at least pursuing it as far as it can be, but also won't just pathologically disregard important danger signals?

"still feel pain normally but they don't get upset by it or feel the need to stop it happening" That reminds me of a couple times where I experimented with drinking alcohol...

Interesting case of "It's not a feature, it's a bug" ;) Why would you call it brain damage if it is more of a feature than a bug?

In a certain sense, Greg wouldn't actually have more willpower though. You basically have just "deleted" his short term goals. Someone with great willpower still has short term goals, they just don't pursue them over long term ones.

@mathreadler Because compared to someone with a "normal" brain he's been damaged. Very very badly damaged.

@Ash : Why would you say it is "damaged" if it makes him able to work harder than his peers in the face of negative reinforcement? Sounds much more like a feature to me.

@mathreadler Because the brain works the way it does for a reason, or more to the point a series of interconnected reasons, breaking any part of that means that you've damaged the balance of mechanisms that goes in to making a person think and act like a human being. It doesn't matter if the damage make positive or negative changes it's still not the original formation that went into making the that he was before.

@mathreadler Which has what bearing on the question?

Unlimited willpower can compensate for those other design flaws of the brain : therefore it is much more like a fix or workaround than a damage. The discussion has bearing on the question when it comes to what to call the difference in the brain which allows for this, I would prefer to call it a change or variation in the brain rather than a "damage".

@mathreadler Nope it doesn't matter what effect it has its still damage, you have to kill parts of the brain that have purpose to get the effect.

@Ash But it damages something that is holding you back or hindering your progress, that is not a damage but rather an improvement.

@mathreadler No damage is damage; it's side effects may help or hinder but you've still created an injury to get there.

@Ash This discussion reminds a bit of jailbreaking electronic devices. Some view the actual break as doing damage (supposedly the company creating the restriction), some view the restrictions on the device as the imposed damage we are trying to cure.

@mathreadler But you don't destroy the basic functionality when you jailbreak a device do you? In this case you actually have to do away with existing functions to create a new effect.

@Ash It depends if you view the imposed restrictions as "basic functionality". It can be practical for someone wanting to be able to "push those buttons", but in general that is just an inconvenience limiting the freedom for the guy having bought the device.

@mathreadler I'm saying that to create the effect the OP is looking for is almost certainly going to cause major deficits elsewhere in the character's functionality so yes there are advantages to the character but also loses.

@Ash Now this is interesting... "Deficits in personality." you say... How do you define that except for "doesn't make available to me the tools I would need to steer his behaviour".

@mathreadler "functionality" not "personality".

@Ash we are talking about a person, so what is the difference in this case? You want some buttons to push, that's basically what you are saying yourself.

@mathreadler Personality is the way the person interacts with other people, functionality includes basic sensory inputs and primitive reactions thereto as well as the so called higher functions.