Juanfi Santos Psychology: PHINEAS GAGE

Phineas Gage was an American railroad construction worker born on July 9 1823, who worked constructing the Rutland & Burlington Railroad outside the town of Cavendish,Vermont. On September 13, 1848 when he was about 25 years old, he was to adding blasting powder into a hole created before on a rock, with a fuse, and sand, then compact the charge into the hole using a large iron rod. Accidentally the powder exploded, the iron rod he was using to compact the sand passed through his right side of the face passing through the left eye and out of his head. It is believed the iron rod landed about 80 feet or 25 meters away. Surprisingly Phineas Gage was able to speak a couple a minutes after the accident and manage to walk with no help and sat on a cart for almost a mile to the lodgings in his town. He was examined by two doctors who thought it was a miracle he was alive. He was almost a month in semi-comatose, family and friends were already ready for his death, but by November he was walking and talking normally. Phineas Gage left frontal lobe had been completely destroyed, that injury is reported to be directly relating with a person's behavior and personality. He became a very annoying person and friends did not enjoy being with him, friend though of him as "no longer Gage". The case of Phineas Gage was very helpful to the study of the brain and its functions. Scientists discovered that different parts of your brain have different tasks that make you who you are, for example the frontal lobe is responsible for your behavior and personality. Brain localization means that different parts of the brain carry out different functions, the whole brain do not work at the same thing. The concept of brain lateralization is that the two halves of the brain perform different functions, the two halves are connected by the corpus collosum which is a group of more than 200 million nerves that communicate both halves. The corpus collosum is not vital some people have the corpus collosum removed due to epilepsy. For right-handed people the "left brain" performs all the analytical thinking, while the "right-brain" controls feelings and creativity. In conclusion, the brain is divided in different parts that control how we think and react.