THINKER'S ALMANAC - September 13

How did an accidental explosion in 1848 help us to understand more about the human brain?

  

Subject:  Executive Functions - Gage’s Iron Rod

Event: Phineas Gage’s accident, 1848

The great paradox of the brain is that everything you know about the world is provided to you by an organ that has itself never seen that world.  The brain exists in silence and darkness, like a dungeoned prisoner . . . . To your brain, the world is just a stream of electrical pulses, like taps of Morse code. -Bill Bryson (1)

On this day in 1848, a 25-year-old railroad foreman named Phineas Gage was leading his crew in Cavendish, Vermont. As Gage was using a 43-inch-long tamping iron to pack explosives into a hole, the powder prematurely denoted.  The tamping iron shot out of the hole, penetrated Gage’s left cheek, passed through his brain, and exited through the back of his skull.  Astonishingly, Gage not only survived his accident but did not even lose consciousness.

Image by Elisa from Pixabay

Gage’s story became a staple of psychology textbooks because it gave us the first hints about the connections between the human brain and personality.  Specifically, it gave us insights into the prefrontal cortex, the part of Gage’s brain that was destroyed by his accident.   Before his accident, Gage was a responsible, affable, and conscientious fellow; after his accident, however, reports were that he could no longer perform his duties as foreman, and he became impulsive and profane (2).  

Today we understand that the prefrontal cortex houses our brain’s executive functions: those uniquely human abilities that allow us to plan for the future, focus our attention, plan and begin tasks, solve problems, and regulate our emotions.  If your brain were the Starship Enterprise, the prefrontal cortex would be the bridge, the ship’s control center.  

Gage lost his left eye in his accident, but he also lost much more.  His friends commented that he just no longer seemed to be the same person he was before the accident.  He lost his ability to plan, he lost his inhibitions, and he lost his ability to relate to others.  Ultimately, he also lost his job.  In 1860, he was living in San Francisco with relatives.  There he lost his life in 1860 after a series of seizures (3).

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  How was Phineas Gage different before and after his accident, and how does this change help us understand the human brain and its executive functions?

Challenge - It’s Not Brain Surgery: We know so little about the human brain, yet we are learning more and more every day from neuroscience.  Do some research on “brain facts,” and identify one fact that you think would help all of us better appreciate -- and not take for granted -- the wonder of the human brain.  

Also on This Day:

September 13, 1956:  On this day the novel I, Libertine was published.  What makes this novel such a literary oddity is that it made the New York Times bestseller list before a single word of it had been written.  The story begins with the writer Jean Shepherd, best known as the narrator and co-writer of the film A Christmas Story.  In 1956 Shepherd hosted a late-night talk radio show in New York City.  Annoyed that bestseller lists were being influenced not just by book sales but also by the number of requests for a book at bookstores, Shepherd hatched one of the great literary hoaxes in history.  Shepherd encourages his radio listeners to visit their local bookstores and request a book that did not exist, a novel whose title and author were totally fabricated:   I, Libertine by Frederick R. Ewing.  The plot thickened once the nonexistent book hit the bestseller list.  With the imaginary book now in demand, publisher Ian Ballantine met with Shepherd and novelist Theodore Sturgeon.  Sturgeon was hired to write the novel based on the rough plot outline provided by Shepherd, and on this date, the fabricated fictional work became fact (4).

September 13, 2021:  In a speech, Pope Francis made a specific appeal to church priests concerning the length and content of their sermons:   “A homily, generally, should not go beyond ten minutes, because after eight minutes you lose people’s attention, unless it is really engaging. . . . a homily must have internal consistency: an idea, an image and an affect; that people should leave with an idea, an image or something that has moved in their hearts" (5).

Sources:

1-Bryson, Bill.  The Body: A Guide for Occupants. New York:  Doubleday, 2019:  48-49.

2-Medina, John. Brain Rules. Pear Press, 2009: 10.

3-Twomey, Steve. “Phineas Gage Neuroscience’s Most Famous Patient.” Smithsonian Magazine January 2010.

4-Davies, Jeffrey.  “Conformity Killed the Radio Star: The Great Literary Hoax of I, LIBERTINE.”  Bookriot.com  Sep 18, 2023.

5-The Vatican. “Address of His Holiness.” 13 September 2021.