Phineas Gage

Phineas P. Gage ( probably born on 9 July 1823 in Lebanon, New Hampshire, † May 21 1860 in San Francisco, California ) worked as a foreman at an American railway company in Cavendish, Vermont, and suffered there on September 13, 1848 a serious accident. In a study conducted by him blowing up a shot about 1.10 m long and 3 cm thick iron rod from the bottom up through his skull and caused a large wound channel. The rod entered under the left cheek bone in the head and top of the head again ( lesion in the orbitofrontal and prefrontal cortex). During the accident Gage remained conscious and was able to report on all the circumstances of the accident later. He survived the accident, and the wounds healed, only his left eye was irreversibly destroyed by the accident.

The accident of Phineas P. Gage is for neuroscience research is of great importance: According to his doctor, John D. Harlow, he was physically restored after a few weeks and his intellectual abilities, including perception, memory, intelligence, language ability, as well as its motor skills, completely intact. However, in the aftermath of the accident, there was striking personality changes in Gage. A childish, impulsive and unreliable man was from the level-headed, kind and balanced Gage. This disease is now known in neurology as a frontal lobe syndrome.

Gage suffered after the accident over and over again from epileptic seizures and fever, lost after a violent seizure awareness and gained it not for a series of further convulsions again. He died on 21 May 1860. António Damasio believes that he fell victim to a status epilepticus.

1867, the body was exhumed. The skull and the time mitbeigesetzte iron rod were exhibited in the Museum of the Harvard Medical School. In 1994, the skull at the University of Iowa by Hanna Damasio was scanned and the computer simulates a brain that fit into this skull. Using the holes in the skull could be determined which areas of the brain were damaged by the rod.

A photo showing gage with iron rod and a sealed due to paralysis of the upper eyelid left eye, was identified in 2009 after it had for years found unnoticed in possession of a collector of historical photographs in the State of Maryland.