Phineas Gage Case Study

In 1848, Phineas Gage was a 25 year old working man. An accident occurred to him at work one day which radically changed how the brain was viewed and known to function. He was helping to prepare the way for railroads to be put down when an explosion happened unexpectedly and it sent a 43 inch tamping iron into Phineas Gage’s head through his face, skull and brain. The tamping iron went all the way through and landed some ways off. The remarkable thing was that Gage became conscious within a matter of a few minutes after the incident. Not only did he wake up but he still had the ability to walk and to talk. Even though Gage survived his injuries he was no longer the same.

2. What tragic accident happened to Phineas and what happened to the limbic system and frontal lobe structures? A taping iron shot through his brain and damaged the limbic system and frontal lobe structures causing Gage to no longer be able to assign priority to the messages sent from his limbic system.

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.

A second reason is that Phineas can go back to work. Phineas can walk and understand people of what they’re saying he can work now. In paragraph 28 it says,”His humors may or may not be in balance, but Phineas is resting quietly at last.” Phineas is fully recovered because he getting the rest that he needs.

Susannah Cahalan, a 24 year old, healthy and successful journalist for the New York post, experienced an acute onset of psychosis. Symptoms ranged from paranoia to seizures, which eventually led to a catatonic state. The onset of the female’s symptoms occurred when she became paranoid of a bed bug infestation in her home, yet after having her home exterminated there was no indication of bedbugs. Concern arose from her nonexistent appetite and severe insomniac behaviors. She began noticing her own erratic behaviors and shortly after experienced her first seizure episode. In search of an answer to reoccurring seizures she went to a physician who put her on Keppra (an antiseizure medication) and warned her the symptoms were due to stress and heavy drinking. The increasing paranoia developed into hallucinations, people plotting against her or speaking poorly of her. EEG and MRI results exhibited normal results; further indicating stress and alcohol withdraw. After being admitted to the NYU medical school EEG monitoring floor, examination showed tangential, disorganized, and temperamental behaviors. Several escape attempts later, placed Susannah in the more difficult patients category. Doctors suggested conditions such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and cancer. She exhibited abnormally high blood pressure pointing to extreme concern.

In Eric Kandel's Aplysia experiment, Kandel showed that a slug lost sensitivity in its gills, after repeated contact to which Carr states "the brain...change[s] with experience, circumstance, and need". Both, Kandel's and Merzenich's, experiments lead to the same conclusion of the physical body adapting in real-time to the environment. Carr briefly writes how a man named Bernstein regained movement in his hand and leg after damaging his brain which regulated movement and how through the use of technology analyzing neural activity, Carr tells how violinists had increased cortical areas of their right hand compared to nonmusicians, and compared to their own left cortical areas. Carr's final example for the brain's plasticity is with Pascual-Leone's experiment. Pascual-Leone mapped the brain activity of a group of people playing certain notes on a piano, and a group imagining themselves playing the notes. He concluded that their brains had both changed in response to the experiment, both in playing, and imagining playing. Pascual-Leone's work showed that the human brain can change itself neurologically without physical activity. Carr summarizes, "We become, neurologically, what we think". Carr asserts through these scientific experiments that not only were Freud, J.Z. Young, and William James, correct , but "the adult brain...is not just plastic but...'massively plastic.'" Carr

Jimmy Paredes helped power the Orioles offense at the beginning of the season but has been mostly ineffective since July. He only had two extra base hits in July and had a miniscule OBP of just .266. Despite being 26, Parades has had limited exposure to the major leagues before this season and has already set a career high for plate appearances. Do his July struggles indicate that he is merely in a slump or that pitchers have figured him out and that he’s regressing back towards his career statistics?

The book Brain on Fire, written by Susannah Cahalan, accurately portrays how an event, a conversation, or just one day, can change someone’s life. Susannah led a prosaic life, until she ended up in the hospital with an unknown diagnosis. In that hospital, she was labeled violent, psychotic and a flight risk, as well as spent several weeks in the hospital, meeting many different doctors hoping to find a cure to her unidentified disease.The critical moments in Susannah Cahalan’s life changed her physically, mentally, and taught her to appreciate family.

However the effects of Phineas’ disabled leg had him withdraw from school, sports and he was in no position to enlist in war. Though the teens parted away, it was only for so long. Phineas came back after Thanksgiving, and as roommates, they grew closer again. Phineas was surely in need of additional care,thus again created codependency. Afterwards Brinker Hadley, a mocking friend of Gene began to question Gene and his roome. Brinker found a man, Leper Lepellier who was present during the incident when Finny shattered his leg. Leper affirms what he saw “...up and down like a piston, and then the other one sank and fell” (Knowles 176). He declares that the sun was blazing directly into his eyesight that he could not detect who was who. Eventually, Finny halts the event from going any further; he was not able to incorporate everything. Overwhelmed, he vanished in a haste. “Finny falls down the stairs and breaks his leg again” (SparkNotes). He becomes handicapped in need of surgery. During this time Phineas confronts Gene about his speechless action. Gene speaks it was an ignorant blind impulse and explains it was not deliberately. “I believe you” (191), Finny pardons Gene. Surgery begins after Gene leaves the room and 5 hours later Gene comes back to visit, but ultimately Finny “... dies during the operation on his leg”. Thus in the assumption of his marrow going straight into his bloodstream, instantly

The most recent case that I have researched it the Troy Davis case. In this case Troy Davis was accused of killing Officer Mark Allen MacPhail. It all began around midnight on Friday, August 18, 1989, a teenager named Michael Cooper was shot in the jaw as he and his friends were driving away from a pool party they attended in Cloverdale area of Savannah, Georgia. Approximately, an hour later in the early morning of Saturday, August 19, 1989, there was a group of young men that were at a pool hall by the name of Charlie Brown’s pool hall. Charlie Brown’s was located across the street from Greyhound bus station and Burger King Restaurant. A homeless man named Larry Young went into the convenience store next to the pool hall to purchase a beer. When he exited with his beer in his hand he was greeted by Sylvester “Redd” Coles who was wearing a yellow

Ryan Fitzpatrick, a 34 year old quarterback coming off of a career year in which he threw for a career high 31 touchdowns and 3,905 yards, the only player to play in the NFL from Harvard, arguably the most intelligent quarterback in terms of “book smarts” in the entire league, has been outsmarted by a second year general manager from Trinity College. The aforementioned GM is Mike Maccagnan of the New York Jets, who decided Fitzpatrick isn’t worth the hefty price tag of around $17 million per year that Fitzpatrick thinks he deserves.

James Fallon, a neuroscientist attending the UC Irvine School of Medicine began reviewing and studying scans of the human brain. Soon enough he began to notice a pattern in the scans of some people who were thought to be psychopaths. In each scan they all appeared to have low levels of activity in a region of the brain located towards its center at the base of the frontal and temporal lobes. This region, called the orbital cortex is involved in regulating our emotions and impulses and also plays a role in morality and

Carson was no ordinary man. His intricate way of thinking was like no other. One of the most obvious and well-known achievement is his concept of incorporating lasers in neurosurgery to nullify complexities faced whilst operating. He knew there was an easier way and took the initiative to act upon his ideas. Comparing Carson’s accomplishments and initial circumstances serves as living proof that anyone can be an influential figure in our society.

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

Due to the traumatic stress this man had endured, the areas of his brain implicated in the stress response showed evidence that due to the harmful effects of stress and eventful childhood experience, it greatly affected the outcome of the murderous man. Areas of the brain included the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex which were greatly affected from the stress, eventually, delivering stress with increased cortisol and norepinephrine responses to stressors. There is also strong evidence to suggest that he may fall under what Freud called the Achilles Complex, which occurs