Phineas Gage

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I was reading the Brain Rules by John Medina when I came across the name, Phineas Gage. The man is famous for his occupational injury which was bad enough but glad that it didn't kill him. The neuroscientists are glad that he didn't die because of the injury but his family might have wished the total opposite.

Phineas Gage


September 13, 1848, Gage set an explosive charge in the hole of a rock using a tamping iron (a 3 foot rod about an inch in diameter). Unfortunately, the charge blew the rod into his head and destroyed most of his prefrontal context. The tragedy makes him be the most famous brain-injury survivor!


Many (during his day) believed that he was lucky to survive but their belief changed as year passed. This due to the reality that though he survived, he was a changed man.
"Phineas Gage had a hole in his head, and ev'ryone knew that he oughta be dead. Was it fate or blind luck, though it never came clear, kept keepin' on year after year…"

The tragedy happened to Gage actually suggests the link between brain trauma and personality. Prefrontal cortex governs human cognitive talents called 'executive functions' which play huge roles in solving problems, maintaining attention and inhibiting emotional impulses. Gage proves the ideas. As after his prefrontal cortex was badly damaged, he became tactless, impulsive and profane. His friends admitted that he was no longer Gage.

He died 12 years after the tragedy because of epilepsy. A number of scholars believe that Gage's epilepsy was related to his injury as the scar tissue frequently become the point from which epilepsy develops.

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