Phineas Gage

Though Phineas Gage has been a famous case study for neuroscientists since his horrible accident in 1848, not much is known about who he was before that. At 25, he was the foreman of a railroad crew who were cutting a railroad bed in Cavendish, Vermont. As the story goes, he was using a tamping iron to pack explosive powder into a hole, and suddenly the powder detonated and the tamping iron shot up into his face. It ripped through his left cheek, penetrated his brain and came out through his skull, landing on the ground next to him. He had been blinded in his left eye, but miraculously he quickly regained consciousness and was able to walk and talk. Although he physically recovered very quickly, mentally he was never the same. He constantly made bad decisions and unleashed a vicious temper on anyone who even slightly contradicted him or what he wanted. He seemed unable to stick to plans that he or others set for himself and had trouble following social rules. He also didn't seem to care about what he said or how it would hurt people. Scientists later discovered that these changes were caused by damage to the frontal lobe of his brain. The reason he is so famous is because what happened to him is one of the first documented cases of severe brain injury. His case led scientists to confirm that psychopathology can result from brain damage, which may leave other brain functions, such as speech and movement, perfectly intact. It also inspired them to explore the frontal cortex of the brain, where they discovered where and why different behaviors are done by different people. It also led to the theory of brain localization, which has to do with the parts of the brain that have to do with specific functions and not all parts of the brain do the same thing. For example, the left frontal lobe is responsible for speech impediment and certain areas of the cerebral cortex make movement in different parts of the body. Brain lateralization, on the hand, has to do with the functions carried out only on the left or right hemispheres of the brain. For example, the right hemisphere controls movement on the left side of the brain, while the left hemisphere controls movement on the right side. Thanks to the fascinating case of Phineas Gage, scientists were able to come up with these two theories.