Phineas Gage and his extroardinary case

Phineas Gage was an American citizen who worked at a railroad. He was an ordinary and common man until he suffered a terrible accident which he surprisingly survived. It is because of this accident that Phineas Gage is well known in modern days. His accident occurred on a normal day while working at the railroad blasting rocks in order to make space for a roadbed. He was ordered to destroy a large body of rock. To do this he needed to blow it up with an explosive mixture of gun powder, fuse and sand. The explosive could not be just placed beside the body of rock for it to explode. Instead, with the help of a large and sharp iron bar he needed to place and compress the explosive mixture deep into the body of rock. But, Phineas Gage forgot to add sand to the mixture. So the explosive suddenly exploded and the iron bar flew and went through his face and front part of his brain. But,amazingly Gage did not die. In fact, he was already speaking minutes after the accident. Although their was thought not to be any damage to him in any way , there was a great change in his personality. He became a person people do not wanted to be with. He always spoke the first think that came to his mind, not caring if it was really offensive. He used to be a very responsible and hard-working man. But, because of the accident he had a very different personality. As a result he lost social inhibition abilities completely. From this case we learn that the destruction of some parts of the brain like the front cortex may not cause death. But, surely can affect people in one way or another. In the case of Gage, his great change of personality led to inappropriate behavior amongst other people. The idea of brain localization states that many individual parts of the brain are in charge of making certain actions. Meaning the frontal cortex was probably in control of the social abilities of a person. The concept of brain lateralization states that the left side of the brain and right side of the brain are responsible for different human actions and behavior. Gage's right frontal cortex was destroyed by the iron bar. Meaning the right brain is responsible for humans to think in a creative way and be social. To conclude, the case of Phineas Gage was really extraordinary and still amazes current scientists.