Neuroscience’s Most Famous Patient, Phineas Gage Phineas Gage is known as one of Neuroscience’s most famous patients due to an accident that occurred while he was a foreman for a crew, who were cutting a railroad bed in Vermont. After September 13 things for Phineas Gage would never be the same, although he survived the ignition of the explosive power that caused his tamping iron to shoot up at him and penetrate his left cheek, hack into his brain and exit through his skull, as well as blind him in his left eye, Phineas Gage suffered from a change in personality due to this incident. Within minutes of the accident, Gage was still conscious and was able to stand up right and recall what had just happened but he would suffer from permanent damage mentally and never be the same person again. …show more content…
The Iron had torn into his brain’s left frontal lobe. The frontal lobe is the primary motor cortex is responsible for motor function, memory, judgement, impulse control, both sexual and social behavior and so much more. After the accident his friends reported that he was no longer himself and that he had trouble sticking to plans, he showed little to no respect to anyone, he had the intellectual capacity of a child and uttered grotesque profanity. With these observations Phineas’ doctor, John Martyn Harlow was able to make a connection between brain trauma and a change in personality and because of that we are now able to see through his documentation the changes that occurred in Phineas’ personality after his brain was damaged and also acknowledge the importance of our frontal lobe and its multiple
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.
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?
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
First, in the Lord of the Flies, the moral code that is being practiced by these children is what they have been taught their whole life. There are certain laws that people have to live by, everyone has an “assigned” job in society, and there is a leader of each group of people. The children in Lord of the Flies set up their time on the island like they would be living in a normal civilized society. Second, in The Most Dangerous Game, there is distinction of good versus evil between people. Sanger Rainsford, the good, can see that human hunting is murder. Where as General Zaroff, the bad, looks at hunting humans as fun, for when he is bored. There are people who see one thing completely fine, and there are others that say it is completely
In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s horrifying short story “Young Goodman Brown,” the author uses a devoted Christian man to take an anticipated journey that will lead the young man into a “sad…distrustful” life (315). The author doesn’t say if the journey was a dream or a reality but to Goodman Brown it felt like a reality, a reality full of shock. Hawthorne is able to deliver shock successfully in his story with the use of symbolism and irony to make the hero have a psychological breakdown making him worship the devil for a moment. Hawthorne most importantly makes these two elements important to show how the journey to the forest changes Goodman Brown’s faith resulting, his loss of innocence. Hawthorne uses the forest to symbolize knowledge and to
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
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.
The death penalty has been the source of taking people's lives by a lethal injection, so the executor wouldn't get blood on his or her hands. This is what I consider the easy way out of a violent crime, like murder cases. I see the death penalty as an injustice to the victim's family because the offender is being killed off without having to suffer the consequences of his actions.