Case Study Of Phineas Gage

Troy Carson
Professor
LING 102
9 March 2018
Phineas Gage: A Tale of Language and The Brain
Phineas Gage, whose story is also known as the ‘American Crowbar Case’, was an unwitting and involuntary contributor to the history of neuroscience. In 1848, when he was just 25 years old, Gage sustained a terrible injury to his brain. His miraculous survival, and the effects of the injury upon his character, made Gage a curiosity to the public and an important case study for scientists hoping to understand more about the brain.
In 1848 Gage was working as a foreman on the construction of the Rutland and Burlington Railroad in Vermont, USA. Workers often used dynamite to blast away rock and clear a path for the railway. On 13 September, Gage was using

He was taken back to his lodgings, where he was attended by Dr. John Harlow. The doctor cleaned and dressed his wound, replacing fragments of the skull around the exit wound and making sure there were no fragments lodged in the brain by feeling inside Gage’s head with his finger. Despite Harlow’s efforts, the wound became infected and Gage fell into a semi-comatose state. His family did not expect him to survive: they even prepared his coffin. But Gage revived and later that year was well enough to return to his parents’ home in New Hampshire. In 1850 Henry J Bigelow, Professor of Surgery at Harvard University, reported Gage to be “quite recovered in faculties of body and

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