The Case Of Phineas Gage Discussed By Cacioppo & Fregberg

67) The frontal lobes are described as the brain’s “orchestra leader” (Martin, 1998, p. 190), which would place them at the reins of controlling effective behaviour. Damage to the frontal lobes encompasses a wide range of symptoms including deficits in executive functioning, changes in personality, emotional expression and social interaction. This includes apathy and lack of spontaneity, inability to plan and modify the sequencing of behaviour and inappropriate behaviour. 2

1. What was Phineas Gages’ personality like before the accident? Gage was an intelligent well balanced man full of life with a great personality and good leadership skills. Modest and reliable, capable of making careful decisions.

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.

“ Dr. Lawrence Mayer, a resident in the department of psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and a professor of statistics and biostatistics at Arizona State University, argues that young people aren 't equipped to make these judgments for themselves”(Firger). Instead of fixing their child, parents and doctors are putting a bandaid on an injury that lies within the mind.

On the date of September 13th, 1848, one of the greatest medical miracles in history occurred. Not only was this case amazing, it was sounded too unbelievable to most and became liken into an old folk tale. However, this was no folk tale. The story of the living mad with a rod in his head was true and it stunned the entire medical community. This is the story of Phineas Gage.

In our lifetime we will hear unimaginable stories of people who survive the craziest circumstances. One that comes to mind is the story about 50 Cent being shot nine times, surviving, and then thriving in his music career afterward. Although 50 Cent’s dramatic situation is a bit different than the one I will be informing you about, it’s still an interesting survivor’s story. On the other hand, Phineas Gage’s injury surviving story is one that has gone down in the history books for a couple of different reasons. Phineas Gage’s incident differs from most survivor stories because Gage had a 3 foot, 8 inch long, 1.25 inch diameter iron rod, weighing almost 14 pounds, missile through a portion of his head

Throughout the course of this semester we have examined numerous issues which have all had different implications for the brain = behavior argument. Some who have been skeptical of the validity of this idea have been swayed by observations that processes and behaviors they originally thought to have a cloudy neurobiological basis in fact have a sound biological and physiological underpinning. One such phenomenon which can help elucidate the ongoing brain = behavior debate is Post-Traumatic Stress disorder, or PTSD. Most people are familiar in some sense with the phenomenon of PTSD. This phenomenon has been renamed, reworked, and redefined numerous times over the past

Have you ever wondered about the functions of the adolescent brain and what causes teenagers and other adolescents to make many risky and absurd decisions sometimes? Did you ever think about the man Phineas Gage who became a textbook case for a severe brain accident in his prefrontal cortex, and how the accident in his brain might have altered it to the point where it would be similar to the adolescent brain?“Phineas Gage: A Gruesome but True Story About Brain Science” by John Fleischman gives examples with evidence about how Phineas’s brain and behavior was transformed after his severe injury involving the prefrontal cortex. This injury causing the prefrontal cortex damaged many important neural connections, that it sent him and his brain

Due to its primary role in processing memory and emotional reactions, over the last decade and a half psychologists have been linking the amygdala to psychopathy. It is involved in aversive conditioning and instrumental learning and is thus involved in all the processes that, when impaired, produce the same functional impairments displayed by psychopaths. Two famous studies conducted by Tiihonen and Kiehl respectively have confirmed this. Tiihonen used a volumetric MRI to test and confirm the positive correlation between low amygdaloid volume and a high degree of psychopathy in violent criminals (measured by the Hare checklist-revised) while Kiehl used a functional MRI to prove reduced amygdala response during an emotional memory task in individuals who scored high on the Hare checklist-revised. However, both these studies along with numerous others were conducted using violent offenders as subjects rather than individuals with psychopathy. Although many psychopaths do exhibit violent tendencies, not all violent offenders are necessarily psychopaths. A study conducted by Raine is one of the few that did focus only on individuals exhibiting psychopathy. In his study Raine was able to show reduced prefrontal grey matter in his test subjects. Unfortunately though, he was unable to differentiate between grey matter in different regions of the prefrontal cortex. It is however clear that there is one region of the frontal cortex that could be

2016). After breaking up the CTQ by the 3 different types of trauma that it measures, I discovered an interesting finding between one structure and CTQ scores. My results between physical trauma score and the amygdala returned a p-value slightly higher than 0.05 (p= 0.066) (Table 4). This is interesting because it suggests that there may be some sort of relationship between physical trauma and the amygdala, but the lack of significance prevents me from saying how the two influence one another exactly. Furthermore, the fact that this is a study prevents me from suggesting a causation based on a relationship. The relationship could be due to several different things, but perhaps an increase in physical trauma leads to a decrease in amygdala volume. It could also mean that individuals with smaller amygdala volumes for some reason were susceptible to more occurrences of physical trauma because of the way they acted based on their reduced volume. For instance, the amygdala is most notably characterized as playing a role in emotion (Ledoux, 2007). Thus, an individual with a smaller amygdala may have altered emotions in some way

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

The importance of the amygdala in social cognitions has been examined in both primate and human studies. Use of primates to study the social brain suggests that the amygdala contributes to social cognition. Kluver and Bucy made large bilateral lesions in monkey brains made across the amygdala, temporal neocortex, and surrounding structure. After the lesion, the animals engaged in hypersexual behaviors, unusual tameness, and a lack of knowledge about emotional stimuli. Lesions exclusively targeting the monkey’s amygdala resulted in similar, but more subtle impairments. This suggest that the amygdala may play a role in emotions elicited by social cues. Studies of the amygdala’s role in human social cognition suggest that the temporal lobes process socially relevant facial information from humans. Emotions from facial expressions, in particular fear are projected to the amygdala. Studies using FMRI to examine typical subjects and subjects with amygdala damage support this theory. Individuals with amygdala damage have difficulty recognizing facial expressions, specifically negative emotions such as fear.

As the prevalence of brain injury and disease has increased over past the century, biopsychologists have been able to dynamically make significant advances in the field of neurology. Specifically neuropsychology, the study of psychological effects of individuals with brain damage. The origin of neurology traces back to 1848, with the case study of Phineas Gage. At age 25, Gage suffered from a traumatic accident resulting in a 3cm thick and 90cm long iron rod breaking through his skull and coming out another side. After surviving this incident and recovering, Gage showed disrespectful, impulsive, and unreliable behaviour to his loved ones and co workers.

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

The Anatomy of Violence presents the latest findings in the field of biological psychology and human behavior, focusing on brain chemistry, as it relates to human behavior, and offers great insight on how brains of those who commit acts of violence or crime differ from those who do not. Mr. Raine provides solid scientific data regarding the ways in which brain chemistry differs and how injuries can alter personality using medical MRI and fMRI and various neurotransmitter studies. A clear connection between human biology and behavior emerges, bringing