...Phineas Gage had a brain injury that allowed other researchers to learn more about the human brain and what regions affect behavior in humans. Mr. Gage was working as a foreman for a railroad when a rod when through his brain. Before his accident, Mr. Gage was “intelligent, well-balanced…modest and reliable” (Ellis, n.d.) This seems to be true because he was a man in authority, he was a foreman in charge of several men. Women seemed interested in him, at the beginning of the video, Frontal Lobes and Behavior- The Story of Phineas Gage, he was having a tussle with Benjamin over a woman. Phineas Gage’s life seemed normal and he was quite dependable. After his accident, Phineas Gage showed his emotions (justifiable or not) openly. He appeared to have mood swings, and an inability to master his sentiments. According to Carlson (2014), Mr. Gage was immature, unbalanced, reckless, and inconsiderate (p. 251). Phineas laughed a lot, cried and whimpered, and had fits of rage, all usually occurring at inappropriate times....
Words: 389 - Pages: 2
...In 1848, Phineas Gage was working on the railroad. He was tapping explosives powder in a hole with a steel pole, which caused the pole to shoot back at him like a bullet. The pole shot straight through his left cheek and exited through the top of his head. He remained conscious throughout the entire accident and even had the ability to walk and explain what happened to him. The doctor he went to did not believe that a rod had shot completely through his head, that is until Gage sneezed and a chunk of his brain flew out. Gage also happened to contract a fungal infection that had to be drained through his nose. Despite all of this he fully recovered from his injury and was still able to walk and talk as he did before. However, His family and...
Words: 352 - Pages: 2
...Phineas Gage: First Research Patient Lizzi Chapman The Accident On September 13, 1848, at around 4:30 p.m., a railroad foremen named Phineas Gage (July 9, 1823-May 21, 1860) filled a drill hole with gunpowder and turned his head to check on his men… The Rutland and Burlington Railroad had hired Gage’s crew that fall to clear away some tough black rock near Cavendish, Vermont. They considered Gage’s crew to be one of the best around. Among other tasks, a foreman sprinkled gunpowder into blasting holes, and then tamped the powder down, gently, with an iron rod. This completed, an assistant poured in sand or clay, which got tamped down hard to confine the bang to a tiny space. Gage had specially commissioned his tamping iron from a blacksmith. Sleek like a javelin, it weighed 13¼ pounds and stretched 3 feet 7 inches long. (Gage stood 5 feet 6 inches.) At its widest, the rod had a diameter of 1¼ inch, although the last foot—the part Gage held near his head when tamping—was tapered to a point. This next part has some different variations. Gage’s crewmembers were loading some busted rock onto a cart, and they apparently distracted him. One says Gage...
Words: 934 - Pages: 4
...1.) Phineas Gage was a young man who at the age of twenty-five had his life changed. He was working on the railroad putting explosives down a hole when the rod he used accidently caused the powder to discharge. The resulting effect caused the three-foot rod to enter Phineas’ cheek and exit through the top of his skull. Now, he lost sight in his left eye and is said to have been able to joke around with the doctor to see him after the incident occurred. The next thing that makes Phineas’ case so unique and put him launched him into history is the documentation of the months following his accident by Doctor John Martyn Harlow. The documents show that Phineas was the first patient to show a link between a brain injury to the frontal lobes and...
Words: 318 - Pages: 2
...This article applies to what we have learned in this unit because in class we had discussed the famous Phineas Gage. Who became known for his case as the first patient that had showed a connection between brain trauma and a change of personality. In the article “Frontal Lobe” it states, “Damage to the frontal lobe can create changes in personality” such as something Phineas Gage had experienced after his injury. Before his brain trauma Phineas was a nice guy he wasn’t violent and didn’t have savage like behavior. However after his accident he was reckless and had no control over himself. He wasn’t the same anymore and was always aggressive he was barely calm. His personality had a major impact that caused him to became a whole new person from...
Words: 275 - Pages: 2
...Phineas Gage PSY/360 Abstract In 1848, there was a railroad worker named Phineas Gage, who was severely injured on the job. In this essay, the author will discuss the details of the accident and what it revealed about how the different areas of the human brain support cognitive function. I will also discuss the characteristics of primary memory, the process of memory from perception and retrieval and the unreliability of memory retrieval. Phineas Gage Phineas gage is known as one of the most famous documented cases of brain injury. This brain injury occurred on September 13th, 1848 while Gage was working on the railroad excavating rocks with a tampering rod in the State of Vermont. An explosion occurred on the job-site that caused a tampering rod propelled at an extremely high speed to enter and penetrate Gage’s skull. This tampering rod entered his skull under his left cheek bone and exited through the top of his head; it was later recovered with bits of brain matter and blood on it. The amazing thing is that throughout this horrific accident, Mr. Gage never lost consciousness, in fact, by January of the following year; he had started to live a normal life. However, it was noted that around this time, Mr. Gage was considered to be suffering from some major changes in his personality. What Phineas Gage’s Accident Reveals about Cognitive Functions “Cognition refers to the higher order functions that are needed for learning and interacting with a person's environment...
Words: 1718 - Pages: 7
...Phineas Gage was shot straight through the head with a three-foot-long tamping iron, and survived but with brain damage. But who would have guessed how truly similar adolescents were to this brain damaged man. Adolescents and Phineas are similar in two main ways: they make decisions that adults wouldn’t, and they have frontal lobes in their brains that are damaged or not fully developed. The first way they are similar is that both of them make bad decisions. Phineas made many bad decisions. An example was was declining an offer of $1000 for a bag of rocks. The offer was meant as a kind gesture to help Phineas get back on his feet, but Phineas didn’t understand that and was very rude to the doctor who had offered. (Phineas Gage, Fleischman 19) This shows that Phineas is not thinking logically, and teens don’t think logically either. It has been proven that adolescents do not think much before making decisions, as the text claims, “...the teenager can vaguely register that there will be parental punishment later on…” (from “Are Teenage Brains Really that Different From Adult...
Words: 343 - Pages: 2
...Phineas Gage and the “American Crowbar Case”. Samantha Romero PY3150 Ms. Dreskin 01-01-2015 ITT Technical Institute Phineas Gage and the “American Crowbar Case” There was a man named Phineas Gage who at 25 years old suffered a severe head injury in the year 1848, he was handsome with a pleasant disposition (Guidotti, T., 2012). The accident took place on a railroad near Cavendish, Vermont where Phineas was working (Guidotti, T., 2012). Phineas poured blasting powder into the borehole of the train track but neglected to add sand, when he tamped it down with his ‘crowbar’ the bar shot out going through his left cheek, destroying his left eye and rocketing out of his skull and landing 80 feet away (Guidotti, T., 2012). This is proven to be even more impressive because Phineas never fully lost consciousness and even considering he lost his left eye completely and neurosurgery had yet to be developed (Guidotti, T., 2012). The biggest deficit Phineas suffered was reported as a drastic change in personality and character (Guidotti, T., 2012). According to Guidotti’s article in 2012 Phineas went from being known as a “reliable, systematic and hardworking” man and after the accident was said to be “impulsive, disorganized and stubborn. His language was said to be colorfully profane, although he did not customarily swear before the injury” (Guidotti, T., 2012). Since there were no neurosurgeons during this time period, his specific injury while unfortunate allowed for some documentation...
Words: 370 - Pages: 2
...Phineas Gage Megan Libey PSY 360 Melissa Jackson Phineas Gage Phineas Gage was a foreman working for the railroad in Vermont. In those days blasting holes was the normal procedure to gain access to lay the railroad down. Gage was using tamping powder to drill holes with a tamping iron. He would use the iron to pack the powder in holes and suddenly there was an explosion which led the tamping iron which was now protruding from left cheek and part of the brain and hanging out from his skull (Twomey, 2010). He had everyone one of his co-workers looking at him in amazement since he never loss consciousness. The Doctor that examined Gage was amazed as well and cleaned and bandages his wounds. Phineas Gage was a well mannered person, who enjoyed working before the accident, but afterwards a vicious viral infection had done the toll and recovery was long and hard. Gage was recovering well physically, but the infection had robbed him of sight in his left eye and decreased sensation on his left face. Gage did return to laying down tracks for the railroad but everyone who knew him saw he was a changed man (Wagar, 2004). Cognition Functions with Phineas Gage Antonio Damaiso showed research based on somatic-marker hypothesis in Phineas Gage that allowed people to understand that patients with frontal lobe damage was evidence that brain’s regions for making decisions are strongly connected to emotional centers (Barnes & Thagard). Somatic markers can help pinpoint...
Words: 879 - Pages: 4
...In 1848 – thanks to an unusual, grisly accident that befell a good-natured, popular railroad foreman named Phineas Gage – scientists discovered that specific areas of your brain control how you get along with people. When Gage was laying railroad tracks, his assistant got distracted and didn’t take the usual safety measures, thus causing a freak accident – an explosion of gunpowder that blew a heavy, long iron rod through Gage’s forehead. Although he survived, the flying rod removed the front portion of his brain, and Gage lost the ability to moderate his temper or impulses. Though he could still do calculations and function in his job, his life changed dramatically for the worse. Now cranky and erratic, he lashed out at the mildest provocation, appeared irrationally unable to get a grip on his emotions and no longer got along well with his co-workers. As science now knows, the ability to manage your emotions requires effective biological “wiring” between the reasoning and feeling areas of the brain, and Gage had lost that link. People are emotional creatures, so always be mindful of the role emotions play in your behavior and that of others. For example, a medical technician named Lily used her emotional intelligence (EQ) to achieve her goals. Stuck in her biotechnology job, and frustrated by the routine and lack of challenge, she got a new job running a start-up drug development laboratory. After a year or so, she felt worn down and again stuck in a rut. She ...
Words: 445 - Pages: 2
...Phineas Gage was a foreman for the construction crew on the Rutland and Burlington Railroad in Cavendish, Virginia. He was working on the railroad using a tamping iron to press an explosive powder into a rock. This was a normal practice for blasting away rock during the middle 1800’s. While Phineas was tamping the rod down into the rock, the iron hit part of the rock and sparked, thus igniting the powder inside the rock. This caused a blast that projected the iron rod into his left cheek and brain, then coming out the top of his skull. This did not kill him; it did not even seem to have affected his brain in a major way at first. Phineas developed an infection that had him in and out of consciousness for two months, was blind in his left eye and experienced weakness in the left side of his face. Only when he returned to work did his coworkers see the change in his personality. (Wickens, 2005). This led people to study his case and do further research on neurological and cognitive studies about how his brain was affected by this accident. The initial thought that Gage was unaffected by this accident proved to be wrong. The physician, Dr. Harlow, that tended to Gage immediately after his incident hinted that while he did not seem to be affected intellectually, he had observed changes in his personality (Kihlstrom, 2010). This shows that neuroscience and social psychology both play a role in figuring out what ails the brain as well as the person. This is where...
Words: 745 - Pages: 3
...Phineas Gage Paper At the age of 25 Phineas Gage was a bright, promising foreman working for the Rutland and Burlington railroad in Cavendish, Vermont. As was the practice of the times, tamping powder was used to blast drill holes for the preparation of laying track (Wickens, 2005). Gage was using a tamping rod to compact the powder in the holes before detonation when suddenly a precipitous explosion propelled the rod, which was 1.1 meters long, 6 millimeters thick, and weighing 6 kilograms, through his left cheek and brain, exiting out the vault of his skull (Leach & O'Driscoll, 1998). Surprisingly, Gage remained conscious on the ride to the doctor. Once there, Dr. Harlow, the attending physician, bandaged his wounds, which bled for an additional 2 days. Gage showed no obvious, immediate mental deficits, but an aggressive viral infection set in at the damaged area which led to a month of semiconscious recovery. The infection finally abated and Gage made a complete recovery, except for blindness in his left eye and weakness in the left side of his face. However, upon returning to work it became quite clear that Mr. Gage was not entirely himself. The damage to Gage’s brain was localized in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex; nevertheless, in order to understand the personality changes that Gage underwent after his recovery it is necessary to first examine the underlying neurological and cognitive interplay thereof. Cognition and Neurology of Consequence Prediction The somatic-marker...
Words: 792 - Pages: 4
...Phineas Gage Paper Stacy M Fender psy/360 July 14 2014 Brenda Edmons Phineas Gage Paper September 13, 18348 a man by the name of Phineas Gage was in a terrible railway construction accident. Phineas was in the town of Cavendish in the state of Vermont; he was tampering iron; these are around three feet long. Buy the chance the iron was fired, and it went through his head, after a CT scan which was cutting edge technology in its time, this showed the iron had gone through his cranium, destruction of his left frontal lobe. Even though he had a painful mishap, Phineas Gage made a remarkable improvement; he was alive for 12 years. He moved to San Francisco, and on the date of May 21, 1860 he died of epilepsy difficulties. The brain has been studied for many years by researchers trying to find the role cognitive functions play in the brain. Phineas was given the diagnosis of traumatic brain injury also known as TBI; this gives comprehension of how TBI's shape cognitive functions. It’s unfortunate that Phineas went through his tragic accident, but it did help researchers find the crucial knowledge of the brain and the areas that show proof of cognitive functions and how traumatic brain injury (TBI) happens. A person's cognitive abilities can foresee functional aftermath after a TBI (traumatic brain injury). The degree of concurrent rational abilities influences the significance of the functional renewal. The changes of a person's social, emotional, and behavioral functioning...
Words: 752 - Pages: 4
...Introduction The brain is most complex of all of the organs in the body. The brain is the place where emotions, perception, planning, memory, action, thinking, learning and language, among other things, all take place. Cognitive functioning takes place in the cerebrum, the largest part of the brain and is carried out by neurons. The brain is made up of thousands of neurons that are responsible for carrying messages from the brain and into the body. These neurons interact with one another by releasing a neurotransmitter that fits on to the receptor of a neighboring neuron. When the receptor is triggered in the brain it causes the body to react, act, think, feel, learn and so forth. But how does this actually work? Brain imaging has given us some insight to answer this question. Brain imaging like MRI’s, CAT, and PET scans all help in discovering the brains role in cognitive functioning. Advances in imaging technology have helped researchers pin point which areas of the brain are responsible for thinking, learning and memory. By recording activity of the brain in action, researchers can examine the systems of brain regions that participate in different cognitive functions, ranging from basic sensory and motor functions to complex functions like reasoning and language understanding. According to the Center for Neural Basis of Cognition (CNBC) at the University of Pittsburg “To discover how brain cells actually support cognitive processes, CNBC investigators use physiological studies...
Words: 1027 - Pages: 5
...Phineas Gage was an American railroad construction worker who is remembered for his survival of an accident in which a large iron rod was driven completely through his head, destroying much of his brain's left frontal lobe. It all happened on September 13th, 1848, when Phineas Gage’s life was forever changed. While working on a railroad project, Phineas Gage received a severe brain injury when a three foot long tamping iron went through his skull during an explosion damaging his frontal lobe. It entered through the bottom of his left cheek and exited through the top of his head. Amazingly, Phineas lived to tell the story about his accident. People who knew him before the accident said he was hard-working, but he just was not quite the same person he was after the accident occurred. In Phineas Gage’s case, his frontal lobe of his brain was affected and damaged in his accident. The frontal lobe, the biggest lobe of the brain, is responsible for conscious thought, voluntary movement, and individual personality characteristics. After the accident, Phineas’ personality had altered. He had become impulsive, unreliable, and unable to carry out his plans. He also couldn’t grasp logical thinking. He was not as organized and professional as he was before due to the damage done to his frontal lobe. With Phineas Gage’s accident, it led to the research and study of the frontal lobe because scientists could not explain why or how he survived such a terrible and tragic accident...
Words: 290 - Pages: 2
