Phinenas Gage's Behavior

The Frontal lobe; which is to do with behaviour, the person’s personality, interpretation and feelings.

Neurologist Antonio Damasio has written significantly on Gage and other patients that he studied on with similar injuries. Damasio viewed Gage's case as playing a crucial role in the history of neuroscience, and stated that Gage's story "was the historical beginnings of the study of the biological basis of behavior". Gage's case inspired the development of frontal lobotomy, which now is a psychosurgical procedure that leads to emotional response and personality traits. On the other hand, historical analysis doesn't support this claim because Gage's injury didn't have enough influence on the development of this practice.

Your friend Dave says: “How can you stand to study the history of psychology? Every single one of those theories is basically the same: the brain controls our behavior.” Given the history of psychology, evaluate Dave's claim using the following terms in their appropriate context:

Imagine a situation where your entire personality is changed forever by an object that pierces an area of your brain. Those who have had a frontal lobotomy, whether purposefully or not, have had their personality changed permanently. An unlucky foreman of the Rutland Railroad, Phineas Gage, was on the receiving end of a tragic occurrence that severed the frontal lobe area of his prefrontal cortex. He underwent the experience of having a railroad spike pierce him beneath his left cheek and exit through his skull, consequently injuring an important area of his brain. This occurrence changed one part of Gage’s personality completely, though he seemed almost entirely functional after his accident. The one thing that changed in Gage was his ability to imagine the future. He lived completely present in the moment. The unique accident that affected Phineas Gage can be broken down with various different philosophical approaches to answer what is called the “mind-body problem”. The mind-body problem is composed of attempting to explain things like beliefs, consciousness, emotions, etc., in organisms. Physicalism, dualism, and functionalism all have their unique explanation for the mind-body problem’s implication of Phineas Gage’s accident.

Overall, this article describes numerous cases of people’s personality and behavior being drastically affected by various forms of brain damage, particularly to the frontal lobe. This is consistent with what we have learned about Phineas Gage and his dramatically changed personality. As such, the author, David Eagleman, concludes that humans are not really “free” and that we are all products of our brains’ physical state, meaning that the notion of all humans being equal in their decisions is fundamentally flawed. He therefore proposes modifying the criminal justice system so that sentencing is customized more for the particular offender, taking into account the functionality of the criminal’s brain,

First attributed to Aristotle was the concept of the tabula rasa, or blank slate. He believed that a person was born pure and their interactions with the world shaped their persona. From the moment we are born, we observe the world around us and, for good or bad, retain bits and pieces that collectively make up our personalities. In the video Inside the Killer’s Mind, neurologist Dr. Jonathan Pincus posited that brain damage coupled with a history of abuse could result in aggressive behavior. “The violent ones were all neurologically impaired on examination.” He discussed a cyst found on Shawcross’ MRI in the temporal lobe that by itself wouldn’t necessarily be significant, but coupled with an EEG spike in the same area it indicated an abnormality. Also in the film, Dr. Dorothy Lewis stated that in her exams of violent children she “found that these kids had more accidents, injuries, illnesses and hospitalizations than other kids.” I believe that brain injuries and abnormalities could account for elements of personality that are attributed to empathy, inhibition and moral concepts; characteristics sometimes lacking or poorly displayed in those with criminal behaviors.

Holt N., Bremner A., Sutherland E., Vliek M., Passer M., Smith R. (2012), Psychology The Science Of Mind And Behaviour; The psychodynamic perspective, 565.

The Brain That Changes Itself is an informative and an educational book was written by Canadian Psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, writer, and researcher Norman Doidge, who delivers a dramatic change message about the plasticity of the brain; how the brain changes itself. "The Brain That Changes Itself" is a chain of excellent case studies of individuals who have undergone a brain deficit of some kind and examines different types of brain deficits from simple sensory; auditory and visual to complex deficits; missing brain regions. The book recounts neuroscientific advances on how neuroplasticity does not limit the individual to predefined neural limitations and that our way of thinking, as well as the activities that we perform every day,

A French doctor encountered a case where a man lost his ability to speak coherently after a head injury. By post-mortem autopsy, the doctor was able to demonstrate that the man’s disability was due to damage in a certain area of the brain (Broca, 1861). This proof of the connection between a specific behavior to a specific part of the brain was crucial to this perspective. Today, the biological perspective takes a scientific stance to psychology which uses technology such as EEG, MRI, CAT scans, and PET. The biological approach has allowed for colossal advances in the treatment of abnormal behavior more effective than less scientific approaches taken by other psychological perspectives.

Freud created the Psychodynamic Approach to explain behaviour. Within it, he describes that there are 3 components of the human mind: The conscious, Pre-conscious and Unconscious. The conscious is the part of the mind which is in our awareness; it contains behaviours and desires which we are aware of. The pre-conscious is the part of the mind between the conscious and unconscious, it contains items such as memories and desires which we are not currently thinking about but can easily bring to conscious awareness. Lastly is the unconscious. This part of the mind is

Neuropsychology is the study of brain-behavior relationships (Barkley, 1983). It is the scientific study of the association between the different structures and physiological processes of the nervous system and the behavior of organisms (Barkley, 1983). The focus of this particular field in psychology is not just pertaining to humans as research on infrahumans consistently provides simple scientific information and data from which research ideas on humans will be drawn/ concluded from (Barkley, 1983). For example, research that was conducted on rats involved giving amphetamines to the rats with given closed head injuries yielded the option of exploring the use of stimulant drugs in helping the recovery of adults and children that have experienced accidental closed head trauma (Barkley, 1983). The field includes the study of developmental changes of the nervous system and it’s behavioral parallels as well as the effects of experimental and also accidental changes of the nervous system on the behavior of an individual (Barkley, 1983).

judgements, language and control our social behaviour is processed in the frontal lobe. Due to the

In order to understand why people act in antisocial ways, one needs to pinpoint which area of the brain controls social behavior. The prefrontal cortex has been thought to have something to do with control of social behavior ever since Phineas Gage's famous accident in 1848 (1). Phineas Gage was a

accident. Right off the bat this story dose a good job of getting right to

This essay will be focused on two different approaches to cognitive psychology: Cognitive Neuropsychology and Cognitive Neuroscience. Cognitive Neuropsychology is concerned with the patterns of cognitive performance and emphasis on the cognitive effects of brain-damaged patients who suffered lesions, injuries or diseases, providing vest information on normal human cognition. (Eysenck and Keane 2015, p.5) Whereas cognitive neuroscience involves in-depth study of our brain and behaviours. As the brain contains numerous neurones and is so complicated, the cognitive neuroscience emphasis on the biological side of the brain and focuses on the lobes that are divided from the cerebral cortex.