164 years later, researchers map Phineas Gage’s pierced brain

In 1845 , an iron pole pierced railroad construction foreman Phineas Gage ’s wit , changing neuroscience forever . Now , more than 150 year later , neuroscientists have created a diagram of Gage ’s mind , cipher out just which connection were changed by his accident .

https://gizmodo.com/how-an-iron-rod-to-the-skull-changed-neuroscience-forev-5778864

For those not familiar with the fib of Gage , he was working on the structure of the Rutland & Burlington Railroad in Vermont , tamp down blast great power with a large branding iron retinal rod . When the powder exploded , the pole pip through Gage ’s skull , sternly damage his frontal lobe . After the stroke , Gage know an uttermost personality transformation , becoming vulgar , obstinate , and capricious . He no longer remember many of his friends and lost any construct of the value of money . The incident inspired many early neuroscience research worker to inquire the link between the structure of the psyche and personality .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3wVCLjmgtA

Although Gage ’s brain tissue paper is long gone , researchers still have admittance to his skull , and in 2004 , a team of researchers digitally reconstructed the rod ’s path through Gage ’s brain . A squad of researchers at UCLA ’s Laboratory of Neuroimaging ( LONI ) , led by Jack Van Horn , reinvestigated that data and then took it a few footmark further . The study sought to vivify Gage ’s connectome , a map of the nervous connexion in his encephalon .

After examining structural MRI and DTI data from 110 healthy men aged 25 and 36 ( Gage was 25 at the time of his chance event and 36 when he perish ) , the researchers created a generalized mapping of the prospicient - image connection in a healthy human brain . The connectogram at the left displays a sizeable human brain , base on averaged data from the 110 men .

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Then reexamining data point on the flight of the rod through Gage ’s skull , Van Horn ’s squad estimated how much of Gage ’s intellectual pallium and frontal lobe were destroyed , and from there looked at which long - range connection would be severed base on such a tissue personnel casualty . This connectogram offers a rough estimate of which of Gage ’s neural connections were discerp . The research worker consider the connection in grey were destroyed entirely , while the connections in brown were partially discerp by the pole .

Although research worker ca n’t decide with complete truth the extent of Gage ’s tissue damage , this study may offer some clue as to the relationship between Gage ’s physical damage and his neurologic changes . In the future , the Human Connectome Project hop to use similar techniques to patients whose brains are still very much with us .

you may read the integral paper atPLoS One .

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