Brain tumours - just about all of our friends thought my xh's behaviour was like a brain tumour including a couple of doctor friends who urged me to encourage him to have a brain scan [as if he would have listened!!] Anyway when he had cancer he did have a brain scan, and nope, no tumour. But the behaviour is like brain damage.
I did wonder sometimes though if there isn't something wrong with the brain functioning, because many of them are so self destructive it is like severe mental inllness. And the behaviour change , at least in my xh and in many I read about here, is just so very different. It is as if they are out of their heads.
Who knows. They certainly make some strange life choices.