The story of Phineas Gage

Phineas Gage, the one fellow you’re bound to find about in nearly every book of psychology. What happened to him, it contributed majorly on the studies relating to how human brain works.
He was a rail construction worker in Vermont, his work was to clear the path where rail tracks were to be laid. His work included filling the large rocks with explosive, covering it with soil and clearing the ways. For this once, when he was using a tamping rod 3.58 feet in length and 1.25 inches in diameter, to pack sand onto an explosive, it unexpectedly went off. The rod fired back, entering his skull from under the left eye, through his left frontal lobe, came out from the top of his skull.

Now this was something most would have been thought of as something fatal.
But this man, he miraculously survived that, leaving all the psychologist of the world scratching their heads like, ‘what, how, when, where’.
This incident especially gave a peek into how we understood the brain worked, where mostly believed it worked in a holistic sense. Now, we knew, different parts of the brain play different roles. Since his memory was intact, no motor or speech impairments were there, was conscious and alert.
But there was one thing which couldn’t go un-noticed. Most of his colleagues reported of him being ‘no longer Gage’. He exhibited signs of social impairment, his friends described him lacking respect, hostile, was kind no more and difficult to work with. While the extent of this social impairment is uncertain since there are not much records past this incident, it is rumored he found a stable job later on in life.

While his primary physician Martyn Harlow stated ‘no impairment’, the psychological changes couldn’t go unrecognized. Some psychologists explained that this social impairment was due to the fact that the brain area harmed plays a role in decision making and emotional processing. Others described what was happening as post traumatic personality change. Whichever be the case, it definitely pushed us towards progress in studies on human brain.