Topical Blog Week #4 (Due Thursday)

One thing that interested me in this chapter and influenced me to find out more about it was the invention of the guillotine. During the 1700’s, executions were public events where entire towns would gather to watch. Before the invention of the guillotine, execution methods were much more gruesome. These execution methods made French physician Joseph Guillotin argue for a painless and private execution method used for all classes. Although Dr. Guillotin’s ultimate goal was to eliminate the death penalty altogether, he did manage to persuade executioners to use this more humane device. The French even named the device after Dr. Guillotin, however the extra “e” found at the end of the word was added by an English poet who found the word guillotine easier to rhyme with.

Although this method was much more humane than previous execution methods there was still some controversy. It was thought that maybe some level of awareness and perhaps some perception of pain remained even after the beheading. This was thought because some individuals still blinked and twitched even after being beheaded. However, tests done by Theodor Bischoff during the early nineteenth century showed that the twitches that occurred after death were involuntary actions, therefore unrelated to consciousness.

Contrary to popular belief, Joseph Guillotin did not create the guillotine; the device was just named after him due to his effort to push more humane execution methods. The first guillotine was created by Tobias Schmidt, a German engineer. He tested it on animals and human corpses. It consisted of two fourteen-foot uprights joined by a crossbar, whose internal edges were grooved and greased; the weighted blade was either straight, or curved like an axe. The system was operated via a rope and pulley, and mounted on a high platform. The first human to be executed using this device was Nicholas-Jacques Pelletier on April 25th, 1792. The device soon gained popularity and quickly spread throughout France with minor improvements being made as time passed. However, the history of guillotine didn’t end after the French Revolution; it was adopted by other countries as well. The last person executed by the device was Hamida Djandoubi on September 10th, 1977 in France.

All in all, the guillotine is one of the most recognized forms of execution within our history. Although though it provided controversies it proved to be effective. It may seem like a ruthless device, but in actuality it was created with the best intentions.

http://inventors.about.com/od/gstartinventions/a/Guillotine.htm
- Provided background information about Dr. Guillotin and his beliefs about execution
http://europeanhistory.about.com/cs/frenchrevolution/a/Guillotine_4.htm
- Gave an in-depth overview of the history of the guillotine
http://boisdejustice.com/History/History.html
- Provided the structure of the device

While reading the chapter, I became very interested in the material about the guillotine used during the French Revolution. Dr. Joseph Ignace Guillotin wanted to create a painless method of executions, because France had some pretty gruesome methods of execution. Some of them included: hanging, burning, beheading with an axe or sword, or even tying the person to four different horses and making them run in different directions. Once the French Revolution began in 1789, Guillotin sent in many articles to the new French leaders in hopes of having his ideas accepted. Finally in 1792, his idea of a beheading machine was accepted. However, he did invent it. The first guillotine was invented by Antoine Louis. The machine was named the guillotine, because he put in a lot of work in making sure something like this was created.
After it was first used, there were many small improvements that had to be made. Once those improvements were made, the French assembly distributed machines to the other territorial regions. The machine was open to all people. Age, gender, and wealth were not taken into consideration. Before this was created, only the rich and powerful were beheaded.
The crimes that caused one to be sent to the guillotine were surprising, because most of them seemed like minor crimes. Most of the people sent to the guillotine were due to being counterrevolutionary. Many people during this time thought dying for liberty was heroic. Other crimes that caused people to be sent to the guillotine include: conspiracy against the republic, statements favoring the return of the monarchy, and expressions of grief at the execution of a loved one. In one extreme situation, an eighty-year old woman was sent to the guillotine for giving food and water to an Austrian. From the invention of the guillotine to the end of the French Revolution in 1799, over 15,000 people were killed by the guillotine.
During the French Revolution, a period called The Terror took place. In 1793, the French created The Committee of Public Safety. This was created to protect the Republic. However, it quickly became a dictatorship. The committee arrested and executed “anyone who either by their conduct, their contacts, their words of their writings, showed themselves to be supporters of tyranny, of federalism, or to be enemies of liberty.” All of that could have included almost everyone, so in 1793 and 1794, thousands of people were sent to the guillotine. They killed many more than the people they sent to the guillotine. They also killed by shooting them, drowning them, or even lining them up and shooting them with cannons.
Many people think The Terror was caused by the guillotine. It was such an easy way to kill people, and technically there was no human involvement. The machine was the thing killing the thousands of individuals. All of this also brought of up the argument of whether or not the guillotine was humane. During the French Revolution, it was considered humane, because the deaths occurred so quickly. Compared to their previous methods of execution, the guillotine was much smoother and quicker, which made it widely accepted. It’s strange to think that a large crowd would come see something like this. Today, this is definitely considered inhumane, especially in the United States. We have much easier and cleaner methods to execute an individual if deemed necessary.

http://europeanhistory.about.com/cs/frenchrevolution/a/Guillotine_4.htm
-Background and history of the guillotine

http://freemasonry.bcy.ca/biography/guillotin_j/guillotin_j.html
-A little more information on Dr. Joseph Guillotin

http://www.classzone.com/net_explorations/U5/U5_article5.cfm
-Information on different crimes that sent people to the guillotine

I decided to explore Phineas Gage a little more. I noted in my reading blog that I wanted to learn more about him so I took the initiative in doing so for my topical blog. Phineas Gage was one of the earliest documented cases of severe brain injury. Gage was a foreman for a crew of railroad construction workers who were excavating rocks to lay railroad tracks. This process involved the worker to drill a hole deep into the boulders they were excavating and then filling them with dynamite. A fuse was then inserted, and the entrance of the hole plugged with sand, so that the force of the explosion would be directed into the boulder and not outwards. This was done with a crow bar looking tool called a tamping iron.

On September 13th 1848, Gage (25 years old) and his crew were working on the Ruthland and Burlington Railroad near Cavendish in Vermont. Gage was prepping for an explosion by compacting a boulder with the explosive powder using a tamping iron. Unfortunately, while Gage was doing this, a spark from the tamping iron ignited the powder causing the tamping iron to be propelled outward at a very high speed straight into Gage’s skull. It entered under the left cheek bone, and exited through the top of his head, later to be recovered some 30 yards from the original site of the accident. The tamping iron was approximately 3 foot 8 inches in length and 1.25 inches in diameter at one end, and weighed more than 6 kilograms.

Interestingly enough, Gage was able to regain consciousness and was able to walk within minutes of the accident. He was then seated on an oxcart, where he was transported more than three-quarters of a mile to the boarding house where he was staying. Once at the home, he was attended by Doctor John Martin Harlow. Harlow cleaned Gage’s wounds by removing small fragments of bone, and replaced by some of the larger skull fragments that remained attached but had been displaced by the tamping iron. He then proceeded to close Gage’s wounds with adhesive straps and wet compressive pads. Gage’s wounds were not treated surgically, but were instead left open to let the injury drain into the dressings. Within days of the accident, one of Gage’s exposed brain pieces got infected with a fungus and he lapsed into a semi-comatose state. His family prepared a coffin for him, but Gage had recovered. Two weeks later, Dr. Harlow released 8 fl oz of pus from an abscess under Gage’s scalp, if this wasn’t released, it would have had fatal consequences if it had leaked into his brain. By January 1st, 1849, Gage seemed to be leading a pretty normal life.

In February 1860, Gage had the first in a series of increasingly severe convulsions. He later died in San Francisco on May 21st. In 1866 Harlow somehow learned that Gage had died in California and opened a correspondence with Gage’s family there. At Harlow’s request they exhumed Gage’s remains long enough to remove his skull, which was then delivered to Harlow. About a year after his accident, Gage had allowed his tamping iron to be placed in Harvard Medical School’s Warren Anatomical Museum, but later reclaimed it. After studying the iron and skull, Harlow then brought them back the Harvard’s Anatomical Museum, where they remain on display today.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Gage
-Total overview of Gage
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/Phineas-Gage-Neurosciences-Most-Famous-Patient.html
-Article written by the Smithsonian
http://neurophilosophy.wordpress.com/2006/12/04/the-incredible-case-of-phineas-gage/
-More in depth overview of Gage and the accident.

Edward Hitzig is known for his work in neurophysiology. His research partner Gustav Fritsch had experience in physiology and anthropology in a slew of countries. But in 1870, the two began to probe the cerebral cortex of a dog only to discover the importance of the cerebrum.
The research began in a military hospital in the 1860’s, Hitzig began experimenting on wounded soldiers with pieces of skull missing. Using a wires connected to a battery, he began to probe expose brains with the weak electrical current. This first results he saw the eyes of the unconscious patients move when he probed one area, an not for another. From this he concluded that the region of the brain more associated with motor functions in the front, and the farther back was not.
When 1870 rolled around, Hitzig enlisted help from Fritsch by creating a makeshift laboratory in Fritsch’s home. Instead of human subjects, they began research on live dogs. Using a scalpel, they removed the “forepaw” area unilaterally on a few dogs. This impaired the postures of the dogs, or were seen as “abnormal”, but left the sensation of the dog relatively in tact. This lead Hitzig and Fritsch to conclude that they had found a region of the brain that controlled motor skills. They called this region the “motor strip”, which is located back area of the frontal lobe in the cerebrum, which we know now as the motor cortex. They found 5 areas of the motor strip that controlled different muscles of the body, those being the neck, anterior leg (extension), anterior leg (flexion), posterior leg, and face.
Through this research, the two also came across another crucial element of brain anatomy. When one hemisphere was stimulated, the opposite side of the body exhibited a reaction. This is a concept that most people learn in middle school, but it’s still an critical discovery to understanding the localization of sensation and motor of the brain.
Their contributions to localization testing of the brain led to the discoveries of many other researchers of the neuroscience. One of their successors also experimented on animals, David Ferrier localized the motor functions of monkeys as well as sensory regions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eduard_Hitzig
basic facts about their research
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/mind/prob_pio.html
where/how their experiments were done
http://neuroportraits.eu/portrait/gustav-fritsch
experiments
http://www.cerebromente.org.br/n01/frenolog/frenloc.htm
Info on hemispheres and Ferrier

After reading Chapter 3, I decided to further search ablation. Ablation fits into the chapter, because Pierre Flourens set out to disprove phrenology with the technique called ablation. I find this topic interesting, because it is so unique, and I want to learn more about ablation.
Brain ablation was first introduced by the surgeon, Pierre Flourens in the 1820’s. Flourens opposed Gall’s beliefs in phrenology, and set out to obtain experimental evidence disprove it. Ablation is the process of the removal of a part of the brain in order to determine the function of that part that was removed. Due to the inhumanness of the procedure, Flourens used rabbits, birds, and dogs in his experiments. Flourens started the process of ablation by first putting the animal under anesthesia and preparing it for surgery. Next, he drills a hole into the animal’s skull. To reach regions deep inside the brain, he would use a device called a stereotaxic apparatus to insert an electrode. Flourens produced electrolytic lesions by passing an electrical current through the electrode that produces heat and destroys the desired part of the brain.. After a few days the animal recovers from the operation, and the researcher can assess its behavior. After the animal’s death, an investigator can remove the animal’s brain from the skull, slice it, and examine it under a microscope to determine the true extent of the lesion.

Although ablation is highly invasive, it does have its advantages. The clinical method, where psychologist study the behavior of patients with brain damage and then study their brain upon their death, may take many years to obtain research on. On the other hand, ablation can be done quickly in a matter of one day. Also, by ablation, you are able to see an exact correlation between parts of the brain and specific behavior, because the surgeon of stimulating the brain with an electrode that can cause an immediate reaction. A downfall of this experiment would be the obvious ethical issue. I’m sure that if this were to be done today, PETA would not be thrilled. Another thing is that we can never be sure that the effects that animal participant would be the same to that of a human.

http://www.pearsonhighered.com/assets/hip/us/hip_us_pearsonhighered/samplechapter/0205472893.pdf
-Tells about the process of ablation.
http://neuroportraits.eu/portrait/marie-jean-pierre-flourens
-History of Flourens
cranepsych.edublogs.org/files/2009/.../method_brain_investigation.d...
-Pros and cons of ablation
http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/Lesions
-Brief background of ablation and how it cam about

Before reading this chapter I had no idea that the Broca’s area of the brain was named after a person. I also fund the story of “Tan” interesting and wanted to know more about Pierre Paul Broca. This is relevance to this class because Broca revolutionized how we look at language. His doings led other researchers to figure out what the parts of the brain controlled. He was a very smart and well-educated man; he entered medical school at the age of 17 and graduated when he was only 20. Broca did research on cancer pathology, infant morality, cartilage and bone, aneurysms, and the comparative anatomy of the brain. Broca was told about a patient named Leborgne, otherwise known as “Tan” because the only word he could clearly say was “tan.” Broca examined him a few days before he died. During his examination he realized that “Tan” had no loss of mental function. He was comprehensive. Broca decided from the autopsy that the patient had a lesion in the frontal lobe. Another famous patient Broca studied was named Lelong. He should say five words: yes, no, three, always, Lelo (part of his name). These words were not pronounced the best. When this patient died of a stroke Broca did an autopsy of him as well. He found the same problem with Lelong’s brain that he found in Tan’s brain. After this found evidence to support his claim he found more in 11 more cases over the next two years. He presented his findings to the Anatomical Society of Paris and the Anthropological Society. Both groups were excited and supportive of his research about localization.
An aphasic patient is a person who has speech and language disorders that happen because of brain injuries. Another way to think of it is that these patients know what they want to say, but they can’t get the words out.
Today we have technology something Broca didn’t. MRIs and fMRIs are able to give us more a detailed look at the brain and what is going on. We also do not have to wait for the patient to die in order to take a look at their brain with an MRI or fMRI. The brains of Tan and Lelong have both been preserved and were used to study the Broca’s area more thoroughly. From MRI studies researchers have found that the Broca’s area is responsible for various language types of tasks. More interesting is that if a patient has a brain tumor slowly destructing the Broca’s area their speech is still pretty well intact. This makes researchers believe that the functions of the Broca’s area can be moved to nearby areas in the brain, maybe even the homologous area in the right hemisphere of the brain. The lesions found in Tan and Lelong were deeper into the brain than just the Broca’s area. Language and cognition are extremely complicated and even more than what we used to think.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Paul_Broca - gave more information about Broca.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broca’s_area - gave more information about the Broca’s area
http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/content/130/5/1432.full.pdf - gave more in depth look at Broca’s work and patients.

I decided to do more research on Hermann von Helmholtz. This fits into chapter 3 because he is discussed briefly on his multiple discoveries. I found him very interesting because he did so much and was involved in several fields of science.
Hermann von Helmholtz was born on August 31, 1821 in Potsdam, Kingdom of Prussia. Hermann’s father served in the Prussian army and also taught philology and classical literature. His father’s influences during school played a big role in his interests later on in his career. Hermann’s main interest in school was in the field of physics. He was steered away later on in his education by his father because at that time scholarships were only offered in certain fields and the Helmholtz’s didn’t have enough money to send Herman to school on their own. In 1837 Helmholtz was awarded a scholarship by the government in the field of medicine. He went on to attend the Royal Friedrich-Wilhelm institute of medicine and surgery in Berlin. Helmholtz graduated from the institute in Berlin in 1843. Upon graduation he was assigned to a military regiment which was required for him to receive those government grants. During all of his spare time he spent researching in the field of mathematics trying to solve a few theories that he had. In 1847 he published a paper on his findings on the study of muscle force and where in originated from. He proposed that there were both chemical and physical properties involved. He believed that if there was a certain force involved then perpetual motion would be possible. Perpetual motion is motion that continues indefinitely without any external force of energy. He later applied the idea of conservation of kinetic energy. He believed that in situations when energy appears to be lost is rather converted into things such as heat energy. His main goal was to demonstrate that no energy is lost during muscles movements. A good quote from Helmholtz to describe his research is “A moving body whose motion was not retarded by any resisting force would continue to move to all eternity”.
Hermann also provided a simple demonstration of nerve impulse speed and how it worked. This theory became one that we still discuss today, reaction time. This is still important in the modern world from athletics to driving skills. This concept although tweaked some still has great value in science today. The biggest accomplishment that Herman Helmholtz had was the invention of the ophthalmoscope. The ophthalmoscope is a device that allowed doctors to look inside a person’s eye and see the details of their living retina. This was the most important invention for ophthalmologists at the time because it allowed them to be view, and diagnose eye diseases and prevent some blindness. Herman created this using cardboard, glue, and glass plates from microscopes. After this invention Hermann was able to propose theories on such things like depth perception, color vision, and motion perception. Besides doing research in the fields of physics, physiology, and psychology he was also an accomplished professor for many years. Helmholtz’s first academic position was in 1849 where he was appointed the associate professor of physiology at Prussian University of Konigsberg. Later on in his career, 1855 he accepted the job as a professor of anatomy and physiology at the University of Bonn which was in Prussia as well. His final teaching experience was in 1871 where he accepted the position as professor of physics (his first love) at the University of Berlin. Helmholtz had many great accomplishments through his career other than the invention of the ophthalmoscope. He had huge discoveries in energy and muscle movements. He also had several theories of hearing and the different varieties of color mixing. Among many awards throughout his career he was awarded a suffix to his name. “Von”. This honor is his country was similar to being knighted. Many of Helmholtz’s finding have now been disproved or expanded on and changed but during his time he was a very important multi field talented scholar that helped to improve on science during his time and discover new findings that are still used today.

http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/history/Biographies/Helmholtz.html
I used this website for Hermanns biography and his history from birth to death. It also had a few quotes from his papers along with a quote about his work in the different sciences from another writer.
http://www.aaofoundation.org/what/heritage/exhibits/online/ophthalmoscope.cfm
This gave me the information on his biggest invention which was the ophthalmoscope. It also gave a better description if its use at the time and how it worked with a few images.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_von_Helmholtz
This gave me his life history and a brief description of what all he discover. It helped me figure out what interested me the most about Hermann.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hermann-helmholtz/
This website went more in depth on his findings and gave me a lot more information on his life, background, education and personal life. It also discussed his major publications more in depth than the other websites.

After reading chapter 3 I found the discussion on Phineas Gage to be the most interesting. I find it interesting because a large pole can go through a man’s head and the man, within 2 months, is pronounced recovered. Of course he did suffer from a drastic personality change and did eventually die from severe convulsions. Obviously something was tampered with his brain that took years before it affected him at all. Gage’s skull was relooked at and studied to look deeper into what actually happened to him; there are many controversies over what actual damage was done to his brain. They found out that it passed through the anterior frontal cortex and white matter, but it has not been determined whether the lesion involved both frontal lobes or was limited only to the left side. The whole accident has had a lot of advancement toward the field of neurology; evidence now suggests that damage to the frontal lobes could alter aspects of personality and affect social skills. Before this incident happened the frontal lobes were thought to have little role in behavior. There was also a good discussion on the three places that Gage’s skull was damaged, where the pole entered (cheek bone), behind the orbit of the eye, and when the pole exited (top of head) which was the largest. The exit wound was the largest and actually never healed, and the circumference of the exit hole is bigger than the circumference of the pole, it is difficult to determine exactly where the iron pole exited his brain. So I guess a question of mine is if they don’t know exactly where the iron pole could have exited his brain how can they study the whole accident down to the point to why he experienced such drastic changes?

http://neurophilosophy.wordpress.com/2006/12/04/the-incredible-case-of-phineas-gage/- Discussed the three different places that Gage’s skull was damaged
http://www.damninteresting.com/phineas-gages-brain-injury/- Discussion of neurology and the frontal lobes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4fGlny5cPg – Video that breaks down what happened and explains different theories to why Gage changed so much.

Phineas Gage is revered as one of neuroscience’s most “famous patient”. As we learned in our reading, Phineas Gage was a foreman for a railroad crew. He was working on a railroad in 1848 when a tampering iron pierced his skull just under his left eye and went through his brain. To everyone’s surprise, Gage did not die. In fact, he was conversing with the doctor only 30 minutes after the accident. Although he could no longer see out of his left eye, he was able to live independently. Soon afterwards, everyone that once new the “old” gage, who was creative, intelligent, and hardworking, met a “new” gage. For an unknown reason at the time, Gage took on an entirely new personality. He could no longer keep plans; he would use excessive profanity; and no longer had respect for fellow human beings. Not long after these changes were noticed by his friends and family, his employer noticed the difference. Gage, who was once the foreman of the railroad company, was not allowed to return to work. After this serious blow to his career, he took on a new path driving horse drawn coaches in Chile. Later, at the young age of 36, Gage died in San Francisco with his family after a multitude of seizures. So, the question is, what does this guy have to do with Psychology?

Well, as you can probably suspect, the reason for his sudden change in personality was due to the brain damage he suffered from the tampering iron. The reason that Gage is famous in Psychology today is because he was the first KNOWN case of brain damage and personality change. We still see the same things happen in today’s world, even if it wasn’t as extreme as a tampering iron piercing through the skull. Take one example which I have researched. A 12 year old boy who was always regarded as “respectful, caring, and compassionate” by his family and educators suffered a terrible car accident. The weird thing about this case is the boy has an I.Q. of 128, which is respectable, but since the accident he has become extremely violent. The violence has gotten so out of hand that the boy has been expelled from three different schools. The cause of this: damage to the frontal lobe.

While researching this topic, I ran across a quote that I believe NEEDS to be shared. “ Yes, they are all injuries to the body, but only those touching the brain have the capacity to change the "soul" of a person.” How can damage to such a small area of the body have so much effect on WHO a person is? Let’s touch base on some neuropsychology. The Prefrontal Cortex is the area in which the brain carries out every day psychological functions. This includes, but is not limited to: personality expression, decision making, and monitoring social behavior. Take another example: A 23 year old male that had a tumor removed from his right frontal lobe at the age of 3 months. By the time this individual was 9 years old, he showed little emotion, had extreme anger issues, and also lacked motivation. As he progressed through his teen years, he had poor study and work habits, did not groom himself properly, lied often, had barely any friends, and showed absolutely no remorse or guilt for his actions.

All of the signs seem to point in the same direction: lying, stealing, lack of emotion, anger issues, and fighting. The weirder part about this phenomenon is that in previous years, (1940-1950s) damage to the prefrontal cortex was INTENTIONAL. A prefrontal lobotomy, which is the severing of connections to and from the prefrontal cortex, was a quite common psychosurgery. In 1951, over 20,000 prefrontal lobotomies were performed in the United States. Prefrontal lobotomies were performed on patients with severe mental illnesses. Prefrontal lobotomies basically would turn people into zombies, and luckily due to the invention of the antipsychotic drug chlorpromazine, prefrontal lobotomies gradually died in the United States. Although they still happen, they are extremely rare.

The research that I have conducted regarding this issue has opened up my eyes to a very morbid reality. A simple car accident could change ME or someone I know for the remainder of life.

http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/moral.html

I got a few of my examples that I used from this website, which I find to be very reliable since these were real cases studied at Washington University.

http://neuro.psyc.memphis.edu/neuropsyc/np-l2-pref.htm
On this website, I learned more about the implications of damage to the Prefrontal Cortex.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/Phineas-Gage-Neurosciences-Most-Famous-Patient.html

This website was great for giving me a deeper background on Phineas Gage than the brief description that the book gave.

I will also admit that I dabbled with Wikipedia mainly to explain some of the terms that I was not familiar with.

I wanted to learn more about Phineas Gages’ accident and how it affected his life and personality after the accident. This topic fits into the chapter, because the chapter talks about the brain and its functioning. It also talks about brain damages and told about Phineas Gages’ accident, but I wanted to learn more about how it affected him. I am interested in this, because I love learning about the brain and how it works, as well as how different types of damages affect the brain, and Phineas Gages’ accident caught my attention. I had heard about it previously in high school about how the iron went through his skull and wanted to know more.
Phineas Gage was a railroad worker and while working one day, he and the rest of the crew were getting ready for an explosion to break the rock to make a railroad path. On September 13th, 1848, while getting this ready, there was a spark from the tamping iron and it ignited the powder. The tamping iron went right through his skull from the bottom of his left eye and exited the top left of his head. A part of his left frontal cortex was taken with it. Gage was one of the first reported cases of severe brain injury. It was said that this tamping iron weighed 13 ¼ pounds, and landed around 30 meters away. Gage gained consciousness within a few minutes and was walking. From September 23rd to October 3rd, Gage was semi-comatose because of the pressure on his brain. His friends gathered and had a coffin ready because they expected his death. A few days later Gage was able to get up and take one step. About a month later it was told that he was walking around the house and could walk up and down the stairs. April 1849 he returned to see his doctor who said he had loss of vision in his left eye and “partial paralysis on the left side of his face.”
Gage no longer was able to work at the railroad after his accident, but still worked. He worked in a livery stable for a while and then for years worked as a stage coach driver. Gage started to behave inappropriately in social situations and started to use profanity a lot and wasn’t very respectful. His friends said he was no longer the same Gage.
In February of 1860 Gage started to have severe convulsions. Gage died May 12th, about twelve years after his accident.
I found it amazing how he was still able to do some work after his accident, and that he lived just about twelve years with this brain injury. According to the readings I read his personality changed and he “wasn’t the same Gage.”
http://scienceblogs.com/neurophilosophy/2007/07/06/the-incredible-case-of-phineas/
This URL told about his personality changes and about the accident.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Gage
This told about Gages’ life and how he lost vision in his left eye, partial paralysis on the left side of his face, and how this was the one of the first recorded cases of a severe brain injury.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2010/nov/05/phineas-gage-head-personality
This told how he started to behave inappropriately in social situations.

One of the people I found interesting in this chapter was Phineas Gage. I knew the basic story to his injury but I wanted to find out a little more detail if I could to his personality and what the rest of his life was like. This topic fits well with chapter 3 because Phineas Gage was a sort of marvel for that time. It was unknown before that with such an injury that not only could someone survive, but that they could still function in everyday life and even work. I think it is interesting to see how someone that people thought so highly of could have such a change in personality that he was no longer enjoyable to be around.
I discovered in a video on Phineas that after his accident and after his life began to change he decided to work with horses on a horse farm. It wasn’t long before he couldn’t handle that anymore either and he began to work as an attraction for Barnum’s Museum in New York City, where people could come and see him in a tent while he posed with the iron that caused his fate. It must have been pretty difficult to go from someone that was respected and well liked in the community with a steady job, to a circus attraction across the country.
There seems to be a lot of debate and confusion between historians and different authors on Gage’s personal life post accident. Some books claim that he abused his wife and children after the accident, but in fact Gage was not married and did not have any offspring. One source even went so far as to say that he at one point sexually molested children after his accident. There is no evidence to support those claims and those that had been in touch with Gage’s family and friends received no such report on that behavior. Something I did find that I thought was extremely interesting was that in 2008 a report of Gage’s public appearance and a report of his life in Chile for some time had been discovered and from what could be understood from the material, it seems that he was eventually able to readjust himself to his surroundings and was able to learn how to behave appropriately in society again.
From what we can see of Harlow’s descriptions of Gage, he is never described as a drunk or molester. The last almost 12 years of his life were not closely documented, even his date of death has been told to be off a year from one account to another.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Gage
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kc213mMSsjY
http://www.deakin.edu.au/health/psychology/gagepage/Pgstory.htm

I found the work of Paul Broca to be very interesting. In many articles about his work he is referred to as well before his time. He is known for realizing that the brain has different sections controlling specific things such as vision, language. His case with the patient “tan” was amazing in that he correctly identified that speech was affected in a particular area of the brain. The work of Broca fits in with how the physiological side of Psychology has grown and developed.
Broca studied two patients who seemed to be of normal to high intelligence but yet both had issues with their ability to communicate effectively. Broca determined that it was because of injury in a particular portion of the brain which is responsible for the control of language and communication. This is still referred to by many as Broca’s area. As I searched the work of Broca it seems that he also was an early forensics scientist as well. He correctly identified the injuries of ancient skulls as had been damaged due to a procedure called trepanation, which the skulls of living people were bored into in a rough type of surgery.
Broca was also a man who thought for himself. He considered himself a Christian but he also did not take everything the church leaders spoke as truth. He believed in the theories of Darwin. As a person who holds some very conservative beliefs myself but has also bucked some of the authority of outdated ideas in some leaders of the church, I greatly respected his courage. He was also a humanitarian and was concerned for the health of the poor. I began this search mostly about Broca’s work in the brain but in the end I found his entire life fascinating and noteworthy.
This is a side note in the reading of trepanation practices. I found it interesting that while in Europe people tended to be killed from these surgeries when they were performed in South American countries many people survived the surgeries and lived several years. The readings I found cited the poor conditions in the overpopulated areas of Europe in comparison to the open spaces and use of herbs for anesthetic in places like Peru.

http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/content/130/5/1432.full
This site had some good information about the patients and research of Broca.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gArQjL2fbc&feature=related

It was an interesting video about the brain and research. Had a lot about Broca and his findings.

http://www.science20.com/recreational_number_theory/ancient_brain_surgery

This site had some good infromation about trepanation

http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/broca.htm

I found some interesting information about Broca's reasearch and about him personally.

The most interesting topic that I chose to do more research on was Phineas Gage. His story fascinated me because not only did he survive iron going through his frontal lobe to begin with, but as a result his personality seemed to change. This story fit into chapter three because it was focused on psychology as a science, which includes the human mind. Gage was a railroad construction foreman who fell into some bad luck when preparing for an explosion. The tamping iron that he was using to compact explosive charge in the barehole sparked and ignited the powder causing the tamping iron to shoot through his head. After miraculously surviving, Gage’s personality changed and he seemed almost as if he lost any inhibition. But even though his personality seemed to have changed, some people still question if any of the changes were significant enough to be caused by the brain injury. Before the incident, Gage was seen as a good hard worker who was outgoing and efficient, but after he seemed much more irrational and even angry at times. It was as if he was a child now and lacked maturity. The affects of Gage’s brain damage can be summarized as a complete loss of social inhibitions, but technically all that can be known for sure is just the damage of the skull. Whether the rest was physical in his brain or psychological, his behavior changed after the brain injury.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2010/nov/05/phineas-gage-head-personality
-summarizes the incident of Phineas Gage and the known changes
http://neurophilosophy.wordpress.com/2006/12/04/the-incredible-case-of-phineas-gage/
-story of Phineas Gage before and after brain damage
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Gage
-biography of Phineas Gage

My topic is Phineas Gage. More specifically, I am interested in the specialization of the various parts of the brain. I want to know about how damage to specialized parts of the brain effects our thoughts, actions, and comprehension. There are many things that we don’t know about the brain or its ability to adapt and recover over damaged areas. I don’t know anything in science that is more interesting to me than the recovery and normative functions of a brain-both in normative circumstances and in cases of severe damage. The focus on cases where individuals went through incredible damage to specific parts of their brain, yet continued to live (second video-after the PBS info.).

Phineas’ case was nothing shy of a miracle. Interestingly enough, Phineas is not alone in his extraordinary ability to survive brain trama. If you was my second video (refrenced above) you will be able to see many other examples of people who had similar experiences, but still recovered.

This summer, while I was doing my research in Taiwan, I got a small glimpse at the specialization of a specific part of your brain and how it effects your reasoning. In an experiment entitled, “Risky Choice”, we tested how the hamygdala and the dopamine produced there effect a rat’s ability to reason. It suggests that not just the location of the brain, but also the specific chemicals produced there are what changes our characters after head trama. I enjoyed studying a specific part of the brain and I found it to be an amazing opportunity for me in the field of research. Now as I look back, I realize how grateful I should be for the fact that Harlow and Phineas created a rise in curiosity and brain specialization studies as a result of the accident.

In my exploration of Phineas and related topics, I am happy to have found so many similar and equally amazing options. The one thing that I will say about the research and knowledge in this area of study is that it seems to suck. We have all of these different cases. However, we can’t set them up in a lab setting. Also, they are all very different and they don’t necessarily reflect each other. We also can’t create a lab situation like this and it’s very difficult to study how people differ with brain damage. This lack of research is most likely a result of the fact that we can’t continue to do these experiments on humans. Additionally, we usually-in experiments- have some data collected about the subject before the experiment. As nobody expects for some accident like this to happen to them, people do no have good accounts of information about themselves or their character prior to the accidents. It’s difficult to study brain specialization. Still, I enjoy the subject and the challenge and I am impress by all of the individuals I learned about as researching this topic.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2010/nov/05/phineas-gage-head-personality -Talks about neurophilosophy and how little is actually known about the specialization of specific brain areas. Also, Phineas’ case gave way to the overarching idea, though it supplied little valid information on its own (little was known about Phineas prior to the accident).

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/Phineas-Gage-Neurosciences-Most-Famous-Patient.html Talks about how Phineas’ case was the start of studies in the specialization of the various areas of the brain.

http://www.pbs.org/saf/1302/video/watchonline.htm An entire Alan Alda Documentary of the Phineas Gage story. FUN and interesting considering I already found the story to be interesting in writing, it’s even better on film(s)!

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/tucson-shooting-gabrielle-giffords-survive-shot-head/story?id=12593878#.UFLFNY2PWSo –Modern Day Phineas example.
MORE VIDEOS!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrULrWRlGBA&feature=fvwrel Fun/funny version of the Phineas Gage story.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kc213mMSsjY Short Documentary giving an animated summary of exactly what happened to Phineas Gage. 8

The topic from this weeks’ chapter that I was interested in and decided to do research on was phrenology. I found it really fascinating that such a study was able to create such a buzz. I was sort of in doubt about how popular it was so I decided to choose this for my research topic. Franz Joseph Gall is responsible for getting this little fad going. Gall argued that the brain is the organ of the mind and that various parts of the brain were distinct from one another. What this meant for phrenology was that different areas of the brain were responsible for certain traits that an individual supposedly possessed. This turned into a very acceptable practice of psychology and society for a period of time.
Phrenologists stated that they could tell what characteristics a person had just by examining their skulls. Greater mass in a specific region meant that the individual had more brain in that area. This could be a good or bad thing. People could possess desirable traits as well as “criminal” traits. For some, it turned out to be a good thing, but I’m sure phrenology ruined quite a few lives too. Employers actually requested and preferred to see phrenological documentation of their future employees to make sure they had the skills required for the job.
Eventually, phrenology was under fire. The problem was that phrenology advocates only believed what they wanted to, and only looked at the evidence that supported their claims. If things weren’t adding up to their expectations, some excuse was made to explain the folly. One major excuse was that the traits tended to cancel each other out. A larger brain part in one area, could either complement or cancel out a different area of the brain. Many experts realized that phrenology was flawed and set out to discredit it.
Once scientists were able to perform neurosurgery and examine people with brain injuries, it was clear that phrenology was not as true as everyone thought. An interesting fact though is that the phrenologists idea of localized brain functioning areas were actually true, just not to the extent they believed. We now know that certain areas of the brain are responsible for different functions. Definitely not in the manner that phrenology portrayed though.
I think phrenology was a very important step for the advancement of psychology and anatomy. Without the creation of this study, no one would have set out to prove it wrong. Without anyone trying to prove it wrong, we never would’ve known the truth about the brain.

http://www.victorianweb.org/science/phrenology/intro.html -- I liked this site because I feel like it had an extended summary of the topic

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrenology -- Wiki is a great social source. Its fairly common to get a controversial answer from a professor about this site. However, since Otto said we could use it, I prefer to.

http://www.historyofphrenology.org.uk/overview.htm -- This site was the most resourceful. It had informative information regarding different topics of phrenology. Allowing for a great synthesis.