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most of the time when a large object

passes through your skull you will

receive what is called a lethal injury

but for one person named phineas gage

that famously did not happen and you

don't survive an iron rod through your

brain without psychologists paying

attention so his name can be found in

basically every intro to psych class but

if your story travels far and wide

chances are it doesn't get told right

every time so it's no surprise that the

tale of phineas gage has become quite

colorful and

inaccurate in most cases but what's true

is that he survived a seemingly

unsurvivable injury and his stunning

recovery helped settle some debates

about how the brain works the first part

of the story is usually told correctly

in 1848 gage was 25 and a foreman

helping lay railroad tracks in vermont

he was using an iron rod three and a

half feet long and over an inch wide to

pack sand onto an explosive when it went

off firing the rod at his head the rod

entered his skull below his left eye and

then came out through the top of his

head landing about 30 yards behind him

he miraculously survived but the doctor

who first treated him reported that his

friends said he was quote no longer gage

the injury had changed his personality

and that's about where the story starts

to spiral out of control in some stories

gage is described as becoming a monster

of a man a mean psychopath that could

never function again in society some

textbooks say that he never worked again

that he became a vagrant or a circus

attraction or in one example that he

survived for 20 years with the rod still

in his skull but pretty much none of

that's true we only have a few primary

sources for gage's life and most are

from the doctor who first treated him an

american physician named john harlow but

those records suggest that in some ways

gage recovered pretty quickly within

four weeks of the accident harlow

recorded that gage's memory was as

perfect as ever for example a visiting

doctor wrote that a stranger would

notice nothing peculiar about him and

six months later harlow wrote that gage

was fully recovered though that might

have been a little optimistic he later

described gage as being intellectually

impaired nothing extreme just a little

slower at things like gage had

previously been thought of as one of the

best at his job and a shrewd smart

businessman but some of his post-injury

records suggest he became

kind of average and it is true that he

didn't get his old job back though that

probably wasn't due to a cognitive

impairment but rather because he became

harder to work with reports suggest that

after the accident he lacked respect and

kindness was more profane and gotten

more conflicts in other words he

suffered a social impairment at least at

first but he didn't become like a wholly

horrible person like some accounts

suggest and he did in fact hold down a

steady job later on gage moved to chile

and worked as a carriage driver for

years though not considered as high

status as his old job as a foreman it

still required him to exercise social

skills as well as cognitive and motor

skills and a doctor who knew him there

described him as having quote no

impairment whatever so clearly he wasn't

permanently unemployable or unable to

function in society it's likely that

such larger than life stories of gage

arose in part through honest mistakes

like the idea that he was a circus

attraction may have arose because he

likely made some paid appearances at

barnum's museum in new york which though

named for that same pt barnum of barnum

bailey was not part of any circus and it

seems like some psychologists writing

about him later on got his case mixed up

with later cases of brain damage also

before pdfs and the internet it was

likely pretty hard for textbook writers

to get their hands on the actual case

notes to fact check what they'd heard

but another big reason that myths grew

about gage is the same reason he's a

pretty important figure in the history

of psychology almost immediately he

became like a pawn in fights over how

the brain works today we take for

granted the idea that parts of the brain

are specialized for certain purposes but

at the time no one was certain of that

and others had a more holistic view

basically that all of it was equally

important for pretty much everything in

fact at the time the biggest proponents

of specialization were phrenologists

adherents of the racist pseudoscience

which proposed that personality and

intelligence were related to bumps in

the skull so some psychologists may have

emphasized gage's recovery specifically

to attack phrenology and being able to

recover did seem to argue against

specialization after all if the brain

was specialized you couldn't lose a lot

of brain tissue and still be mostly fine

meanwhile according to the phrenologists

who again were wrong the rod hit him in

the parts of the brain responsible for

benevolence and veneration so they

likely overemphasized the changes in his

social abilities leading to the bizarre

stories that then snowballed today

gage's true story fits with our

understanding of brain specialization

just not the way that phrenologists

thought what exactly happened to his

brain wouldn't be studied in depth until

over a century and a half after his

accident gage died 11 years after the

incident and was buried but his skull

was later exhumed and in a study

published in 2012 and plos one

researchers were able to create a 3d

model of that skull to fully examine

what happened to it based on the

placement of the fractures and what's

known from modern imaging of brain

anatomy the researchers suggested that

the damage was largely to his left

frontal lobe a part of the brain which

is associated with decision-making and

emotional processing that might explain

some of the more subtle deficits he

suffered they also found that it was

likely most of the damage occurred to

white brain matter instead of gray

matter brain tissue that appears white

is made of the myelinated axons that

connect neurons while gray matter is

made mostly of neuron cell bodies the

research proposed that gage lost around

11 of his white matter specifically

white matter connecting the orbital

frontal cortex of the frontal lobe to

the limbic system while perhaps only

losing four percent of his gray matter

and that could help explain his recovery

because while gray matter doesn't grow

back well after injury it is possible

for white matter to regenerate this also

makes gage's case look a lot like modern

degenerative diseases like

frontotemporal dementia similar brain

regions are affected by the disease and

some of the symptoms associated with

personality change can also occur and

that modern comparison is a good

reminder of why it's important to debunk

the myths about phineas gage the wild

stories about him becoming an

unemployable vagrant can end up

dehumanizing him and we don't want to do

that to people who experience accidents

or brain damage today so keeping in mind

the full life he lived after his

accident can help remind us that

everyone deserves to have their story

told right and the human brain is

incredibly resilient thanks for watching

this episode of scishow psych if you

like learning about the human brain you

are in the right place check out some of

our other episodes to learn more about

how our minds work i really like the one

that we did on how surprisingly smart

babies are for example because my baby

is definitely surprisingly smart and

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