Reply to: ? The case of Phineas Gage was a very odd case. He got a traumatic brain injury (TBI) which happened from

Reply to:

The case of Phineas Gage was a very odd case. He got a traumatic brain injury (TBI) which happened from a railway line incident where he worked at. An explosion occurred and the tamping iron hit Gage in the face and went through the left cheek and passed through the front part of his head into his skull. Surprisingly he lived which was very much a blessing. Although, twelve years after his incident he kept having multiple convulsions and ended up passing away from a seizure on May 21, 1860 (Garcia-Molina, 2012).

This Phineas Cage case can prove the ideas of localization. Due to the traumatic brain injury that had occurred there had been a personality change. For example, he didn’t have much impulse control and had issues relating to other people which occurred after his injury. According to Franz Gall affective and intellectual faculties were located in certain areas of the cerebral cortex and it related to the person’s behavior (Garcia-Molina, 2012). On the other hand, Flourens said that this area of the brain functioned as a whole (Garcia-Molina, 2012). Despite the difference that the two had in their beliefs, they both agreed that this part of the brain plays a role in all higher mental function and is now universally accepted when it comes to brain physiology.

Modern and neuroscientists and psychologists can learn a lot from Cages injury. They already know that this area of the brain is responsible for emotion, reasoning, language, and our memory (Gazzaniga & Mangun, 2018). They have a better knowledge and understanding of what can happen when lesions or damage happen in the brain, which in turn doesn’t make them completely lose their function.

García-Molina, A. (2012). Phineas Gage and the enigma of the prefrontal cortex. Neurología (English Edition), 27(6), 370–375. https://doi-org.lopes.idm.oclc.org/10.1016/j.nrleng.2010.03.002