” . . . the part of the brain where desires, fears and hopes are created — was irreversibly damaged.”
The brain is a mechanism that can be used by the soul. Desires, fears, and hopes are never “created” by the brain; these are functions of the soul.
Man is a living soul-—that is not part of the physical being, but the spiritual side. The body is merely a tent; a covering. A soul is an individual (hence, desires, fears, hopes, etc.) The spirit is like wind (pneumas) (Genesis 1 & 2)
We can see the body; the tent. The soul may be called our “ghost,” and it has a bodily shape, and is spoken of in the Scripture as having bodily parts. The rich man in Luke 16 lifted up his EYES in hell, and asked Abraham to send Lazaraus to put water on his TONGUE. That is a SOUL (and he is still there!); his body was placed in a grave somewhere.
The soul is not in the cranium. The brain is used by the soul as a processing device, but the brain does not “create” personal attributes.
There are 11 dimensions of existence and they all work together to allow us to exist ~ no one of them is unimportant. Paul speaks of the heart, mind, body, spirit and soul. There are several others intuited elsewhere.