Human Cognition and the Brain - Case Study Example

Phineas P. Gage was a railroad employee who went through serious brain damage when metal pierced through his head, destroying the frontal lobe areas of his mind. This brain damage was expected to impose severe impacts on his feelings, attitudes, and behaviors, transforming him in a wild and unstable level, so intense so that his friends even mentioned that he was not even the person he once was prior to the accident. At the time that this happened to the medical world, Gage's situation resulted in developments in the medical belief of the operations and portions of the human brain concerning human feelings and behaviors.

Gage's situation is mentioned as among the initial proof recommending that serious injury to the frontal lobes of the human brain could change elements of attitudes and behavior and will have an impact on the communicative abilities. Prior to this case, the frontal lobes were commonly perceived to possess very minimal responsibilities in attitudes (Fleischman, 2004). With respect to current medical research, a serious injury to the brain, especially in the frontal area by an object that has dimensions of more than an inch in diameter and has a weight of more than ten pounds, would definitely make living impossible for the person, since this would mean a lethal destruction to essential brain parts, which include the superior sagittal sinus.

Nonetheless, Gage was able to make it through the serious accident and added miseries because of infection developed. Gage was eventually discovered to have exhibited radical shifts in attitudes and perceptions.Gage's situation is mentioned as among the initial proof recommending that serious injury to the frontal lobes of the brain could change elements of human behavior and have an adverse impact on the proper communication between people. Prior to this situation, the frontal lobes were generally perceived to have very minimal responsibilities in human attitudes.

Medical expert Antonio Damasio has studied thoroughly on the case of Gage and including other people he has devoted his time which, in his own opinion, had the same brain damages. In an idea he pertained to as the somatic marker theory, Damasio recommends a connection between the frontal lobes, human behavior and logical choices of a person. He views Gage's situation as having an essential responsibility in the field of nerve science, stating that Gage's case was the essential foundation of the field of the scientific foundations of human attitudes.

While researches by Hanna Damasio and his assistants recommended a serious damage to the frontal lobes, a recent research by Ratiu and his assistants formulated on a scan of Gage's head implies that the degree of Gage's brain damage must have been not so serious at all as what is known today (Bradberry, 2005).It is normally recommended that Gage's situation hastened the improvement of a medical procedure called frontal lobotomy, currently a rare medical operation that results in an erratic behavioral response and attitude developments.

Nevertheless, past research investigation does not look very positive to validate this hypothesis.