...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
...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
...Phineas Cage Paper Daunique Irvin Psych 360 3/21/2013 Dr. Gayle Ball-Parker “The cognitive perspective focuses on the way people perceive, process, and retrieve information” (Kowalski & Westen, 2011). Cognitive psychologists are interested in how memory functions, how people solve problems and make decisions, and similar questions. Cognitive function would include any and all characteristics of an individual ’s perception, such as, sensing, reasoning, conception, imagining and remembering (Willingham, 2007). Different areas of the brain serve different cognitive functions. The thalamus is a relay station for sensory and motor information. For all senses except smell, the receptors first send information to the thalamus, which passes it on to the cortex. The Amygdala is believed to be important in the processing of emotion and probably information about social functions. Hippocampus is important in memory. The cerebellum is important in motor control (Willingham, 2007). Phineas Gage worked on a railroad and had an accident on September 13, 1848 where an explosion caused an iron from the railroad to penetrate straight through the frontal part and on the left region of 25 year old, Phineas Gage’s head (Van Horn, Irima, Togerson, Chambers, Kikinis, & Toya, 2012). A iron rod shot upwards, through the left cheek of Gage, passing behind his left eyeball, piercing his cranial vault under the left basal forebrain, passing through his brain, and then...
Words: 718 - Pages: 3
...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
...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 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
...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
...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
...research, inference, experiments and actual real life occurrences. Such was the case of Phineas Gage (1823 – 1860), a young foreman on the railroad in the mid 1800’s who survived a blasting accident which destroyed a part of his brain. Documentation on Mr. Gage’s health and personality before and after the accident opened the door to the role of the brain in cognitive functions. Phineas Gage’s accident and apparent recovery precipitated the idea that there was a connection between the human brain and the personality. First, prior to Mr. Gage’s phenomenal recovery from the loss of a substantial part of his brain, scientists believed that the brain was an entire “organ”, and that all of it was needed to function at all. The incidence with Phineas’ recovery and his continual capability to function altered scientific thinking substantially. Secondly, the adaptation that he made in his personality opened further doors for studying the cognitive adaptability of the brain. According to friends and collegues, Gage was no longer Gage. Once a friendly and affable, easy to get along with individual, he became stubborn, argumentative and forgetful, unable to organize his life in a reasonable manner. He could no longer hold down a job. Phineas Gage died 12 years after a rod pierced his skull and permanently damaged his frontal cortex. The scientific studies that followed the reports of Phineas Gage’s accident and recovery led scientists to determine that the brain, while indeed...
Words: 619 - Pages: 3
...Psy 260 May 15, 2011 Patricia Adesso Phineas Gage 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...
Words: 827 - Pages: 4
...Phineas Gage Paper The Brain an amazing structure it is designed to multitask on a continual basis. The human brain weighting three pounds, and having the ability to give life as well as learn and move throughout life is amazing. Each part of the brain controls specific actions. Understanding, and recognize where the actions are coming from will give understanding on how the human mind works and understanding how we learn. ( WEBSITE) Cognitive Brain functions Cognitive functions can consist of problem solving, speaking, and learning as well as retaining memory and expressing and feeling emotions. Cognitive functions originate in the part of the brain called cerebrum also known as the cerebral cortex this takes up majority of the brains mass. The cerebral cortex is made up of four lobes which consist of frontal lobe, temporal lobe, parietal lobe, and the occipital lobe. Each lobe has a task and serves a cognitive function to the brain. Some task such as speaking and learning require coordinated processing from multiple areas of the cerebrum (Retrieved from http://www.ehow.com/about_5386858_normal-brain-functions.html). Frontal lobe This lobe can be found in the front of the brain, and this is the center for emotions and personality. Motor speech and behavior and critical thinking are centered in the frontal lobe. Problem solving, reasoning, planning, memory, language, judgment control of impulses, and social and sexual behavior as well are managed by frontal lobe (Retrieved...
Words: 1112 - Pages: 5
...Phineas Gage Paper PSY360 Cognitive Psychology Bobbi G. Rice November 21, 2010 Diana Keys Phineas Gage Paper Phineas P Gage was a railway construction workman who, in 1848, received a devastating penetrating head injury. A 4 ft long tamping iron was fired by accident through his skull destroying both frontal lobes. He survived the accident by chance, the care he received from colleagues at the scene and through medical care received from doctors (Grieve, 2010). Gage remained conscious on the way to the local physician. Upon arrival, Dr. Harlow, the attending physician, bandaged his wounds, which continued to bleed for another 2 days. Gage showed no obvious, immediate mental discrepancies, but an aggressive viral infection set in at the damaged area which led to a month of semiconscious recovery. Once infection finally subsided, Gage made a complete recovery, except for blindness in his left eye and weakness in the left side of his face. Upon his returning to work it became quite evident that Mr. Gage was not entirely himself. The damage to Gage’s brain was located in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex; but, 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. “The higher cognitive functions, working memory, mental imagery, and willed action, are all intimately associated with consciousness” (Frith & R, 1996, ). Perception, attention...
Words: 721 - Pages: 3
...psychology and it refers to the various mental processes. Prior to Phineas Gage’s famous accident in 1848, neuroscientists strongly believed that the brain’s role in cognitive functioning was minimal. (Scheffer, 2005)However, after the extensive research that was inspired by his accident, this perception changed and presently, the role of brain in cognitive functions cannot be underrated. Overview of Phineas Gage Accident Working for a big construction company in the year 1848, Phineas Gage was skilled in performing numerous tasks in any construction site. He had even been entrusted by his employees as a foreman in the construction site as a result of his experience and illustrious character. On that fateful day while working on a construction project in Vermont, Phineas Gage sustained a horrific injury to his brain when a huge metallic rod accidentally penetrated through his skull. (Fleischman, 2004) The magnitude of the damage caused by this injury was there for all to see; the metallic rod had left a gaping hole in Gage’s skull. Amazingly, Phineas Gage survived the accident. However, this injury completed changed his personality and he would no longer relate with people as easily as he did prior to the accident. (Fleischman, 2004) This was a clear indication that the human brain plays an immense role when it comes to cognitive functions. Revelations from Phineas Gage’s Accident The historic accident that Phineas Gage sustained in 1848 formed a solid basis for research in neuroscience...
Words: 942 - Pages: 4
...individual assignment How did The case of Phineas gage impact our current understanding of brain Function Introduction Phineas Gage is known about by many people as the famous patient of neuroscience. He experienced a distressing injury when a rod of iron passes through his head. He escaped from this accident but his personality got changed completely afterward. He was a simple man before an accident, full of energy but after his accident he was “no longer gage “(Harlow, 1868, pp. 339–340). His new kind of behavior didn’t have any relevance to his old personality. He became the man who get involve in bad blasphemous having a difference with his co-workers. He died in 1860. after several years right after the passing away Phineas’ entire body was exhumed, his skull was removed and taken along, with the iron rod, to Harlow, next surviving in Woburn simply outdoors Boston. When his skull was examined it was found that both sides of his prefrontal cortex received severe damage due that iron rod which passes through his head. Discussion The primary single-process answers gain coming from Ferrier’s 1876 experiment based conclusion a pre-frontally found inhibitory-motor mechanism manipulated measures by simply regulatory the particular relationship relating to the brain’s physical and motor parts. 2 years after primary formulating the particular device, Ferrier applied this kind of inability regarding inhibition to explain Phineas’ signs. (Ferrier, 1878). The change in his behavior...
Words: 666 - Pages: 3
