The story of Phineas Gage provides a dramatic example of how brain damage can provide us with scientific clues.
To study the brain through the lens of experimental neuropsychology, we first need to find some before-and-after stories of people who have suffered specific types of brain damage. There are many such stories – but few of them are as vivid, grisly, or bizarre as that of Phineas Gage.
Gage was a nineteenth-century railroad construction foreman who worked for the Rutland & Burlington Railroad company in Vermont. Highly regarded as an efficient, dependable, and diligent worker, Gage was entrusted with one of the industry’s most delicate, demanding, and dangerous tasks: setting explosive charges for demolitions. If you didn’t set the charges just right, they could literally blow up in your face.
Unfortunately for Gage, that’s exactly what happened in the summer of 1848. While setting a small explosive charge to help clear the way for a railroad track, a sudden, accidentally triggered explosion sent a slender iron rod flying straight through his head. It entered his left cheek, pierced the bottom of his skull, passed through the front of his brain, and shot out through the top of his head, landing some 100 feet away.
What happened next was even more shocking: not only did Gage survive the accident, but he was able to sit up and talk just a few minutes later. A doctor treated his wound, and Gaged lived on for more than a decade. During that time, he exhibited normal brain functioning in most areas of cognition, including perception, memory, language, and intelligence.
But in other respects, “Gage was no longer Gage,” as some of his friends put it. He stopped respecting social conventions and seemed to show little concern for his future. He started swearing like a sailor, telling lies, ignoring advice, and acting on impulses. He would come up with one scheme after another, only to drop them and move on to the next. He seemed unable to stick to any goals or follow through with any plan of action.
For Gage, the consequences were disastrous. He was fired from the railroad company and drifted from one job to another at various horse farms until he ended up as a sideshow at a circus. But for science, Gage’s story has provided a fascinating window into the mysteries of the human brain. As we’ll see, it suggests that a specific part of the brain plays a critical role in one of our most important areas of cognition.
