Phineas Gage

Phineas Gage suffered a traumatic brain injury when an iron rod was driven through his entire skull, causing substantial damage to his frontal lobe. He is referred to as one of the most famous patients of neuroscience due to the unlikely fact that he survived the incident.

Damage to the frontal lobe will affect the awareness of what we are doing in our environment, shown through Gage’s difficulty in estimating the size and amounts of money one month on from the accident – this is still phenomenal due to the amount of damage that the accident caused.

One year on from the disaster, Gage had lost vision in his eye, suggesting that there was also some damage of the occipital lobe as well as the frontal lobe. There is also some evidence to show that the cerebral cortex was damaged due to the fact that people would describe Gage as a hard working, pleasant man prior to the accident, and yet post-accident people would describe him as surly, aggressive and unable to hold down a job – this shows a great change in his personality.

Due to the fact that the frontal lobe, the occipital lobe, the limbic system and the cerebral cortex were all affected, it would be a good estimation that the iron rod mainly damaged the cerebral hemisphere in the forebrain which would account for his personality changes, loss of vision and learning as well as emotional difficulties.