Question

The case of Phineas Gage is one of the best-known case studies in psychology. In 1848, as you already know, Gage suffered an accident in which a metal rod pierced his cheek and brain and penetrated the top of his head. Yet not only did he survive this horrific accident, but he also managed to pick himself up and speak to workers who came to his aid. Though he survived his injuries, his personality changed—so much so that people would remark, “Gage is no longer Gage.” Why do you think Gage’s injury affected his personality but not the basic life functions that the brain controls, such as breathing and heart rate? How might the nature of the injury that Gage sustained explain why this once polite and courteous man became aggressive and unruly?

Answer 1

Gage displayed significant changes in behavior after his injury, but the nature, extent, and duration of these changes have been difficult to establish.Only a handful of sources give direct information on what Gage was like (either before or after the accident), the mental changes published after his death were much more dramatic than anything reported while he was alive, and few sources are explicit about the period of Gage's life to which each of their various descriptions of him (which vary widely in their implied level of functional impairment) is meant to apply.

The damage to Gage’s frontal cortex caused by the iron rod seems to have resulted in a loss of social inhibitions. The role of the frontal cortex in social cognition and decision making is now well-recognised; in the 19th century, however, neurologists were only just beginning to realise these connections. Gage’s injuries provided some of the first evidence that the frontal cortex was involved in personality and behaviour.

One of the pioneering researchers in this field at the time was David Ferrier, a Scottish neurologist who performed extensive experimental research into cerebral function. In a lecture to the Royal College of Physicians in 1878, Ferrier observed that in his experiments on primates, damage to the frontal cortices seemed to have no effect on the physical abilities of the animal but brought about “a very decided alteration in the animal’s character and behavior”. He used the experience of Phineas Gage as a case study to support his claims.

cientists have made various attempts to use the skull to reconstruct Gage’s injury and establish which areas of his brain were damaged. A team led by Jack Van Horn of UCLA’s Laboratory of Neuroimaging (part of the Human Connectome Project) created a new digital model of the rod’s path. It suggested that the damage to Gage’s brain was more extensive and severe than had previously been estimated: up to 4 per cent of the cerebral cortex and about 11 per cent of the total white matter in thefrontal lobe were destroyed.

The model also indicates that the accident damaged the connections between the frontal cortex to the limbic system, which are involved in the regulation of emotions. This would seem to support some of the contemporary reports of Gage’s behaviour.