That story as it’s commonly told is probably not correct. Everything about the blast and the hole in his head is true, but the drastic personality changes are probably incorrect.
Malcolm MacMillan wrote a masterpiece on what we actually know about the life of Gage, and it’s far from the angry impulsive man we hear about in textbooks.
Thanks for bringing up MacMillan. Manon Auffret has more recently researched the newspaper coverage of Gage, and her research adds a great deal of evidence supporting MacMillan’s arguments. Basically, there’s a lot of sensationalist and verifiably false stories about Gage. There’s no evidence from the time period of personality changes, and a lot of the wild stories appeared decades after his death, probably fabricated. Allegedly Gage was a drunk, but the evidence shows he abstained completely. Allegedly he beat his wife, but evidence shows he was never married. Allegedly he was a circus performer but there’s no evidence from the time period to support this.
Well thank you for pointing me to the abatract. Makes me want to see the actual poster.
Thanks for the read. Didn’t know that.
The human brain has an incredible capacity to keep working under ridiculous circumstances. Remove half your brain? You’re good besides having to relearn some stuff.
Born with 90% of your brain missing? Might not even know until you have an unrelated MRI as an adult (true story, guy only had a shell of a brain filled with CSF).
Born with 90% of your brain missing? Might not even know until you have an unrelated MRI as an adult (true story, guy only had a shell of a brain filled with CSF).
Did he otherwise have a normal life and behaved normally? Also, what’s CSF?
I think he had an IQ that was below average, but other than that I believe he was normal.
And cerebral spinal fluid.
CSF is cerebrospinal fluid, liquid in and around your brain/spine.
This makes me wonder, could it be possible to have a stroke without ever knowing because your brain adapted to it?
I don’t think so. It takes time for the brain to adapt. A stroke is a very sudden event. You’re going to notice it. But you may fully recover, even if there is permanent brain tissue damage.
You can absolutely have mini strokes and not notice it, but they’re basically warning tremors to a big stroke down the line.
Could be those micro strokes just effecting small area. could remove memory or function that goes un noticed
Phineas Gage’s story and subsequent impact on many fields is fascinating.
I’ve worked in health care and watching people with TBIs change is wild.
It raises the Ship of Theseus issue. Did he really survive if he was a different person after?
Yes, he did. We all change over time. I was once a toddler who couldn’t walk. Now I’m nearly 40 and thus far can walk just fine. I’m different from who I was, but still I’m the same person.
He was still himself, just modified by his injury
I’m mid-40s and not at all the same person I was in my 30s, which was very different from my 20s, which was very different from my teens, etc. What makes you certain that you’re the same person? What is there about you that, if it changed, would make you not the same person? I’m honestly curious about your perspective.
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Consequence is key to personhood. One can make the argument that, at least socially, you are 3 different people throughout your life, each with different levels of social responsibility. At first, you are a child, and social consequence is isolated to your core internal group or family unit, then you transition into adulthood, where social consequence places you subservient to your tribe, nation, or even planet, and eventually, you will once again become a 3rd individual in the dusk of your life, when social responsibility once again falls to the family unit, where you are subservient to your caretakers. The key is that the mistakes of an 18yo -can- affect a 50yo, through debt, prison, social shaming/othering, etc. One might argue that the 3rd person doesn’t exist, and maybe even the 1st, too. But socially, we appear to distinguish a person from their responsibilities in these stages.
52 here. I’m a different person, year by year. Nothing radical, but I’m not the same man I was at 50 or 40 or 30 or 20 or 10.
Blindsight, by Peter Watts:
“I’ve been tweaked plenty. Change one more synapse and I might turn into someone else.”
“That’s ridiculous and you know it. Or every experience you had would turn you into a different person.”
I thought about that. “Maybe it does.”
Because I can trace a line of myself in time. I’m human, and I percieve time to be linear, so if I look back in time through my memories, I can see myself. Not only that, but there is hard physical evidence that I exist, and have existed since I was born in (what we label as) the year 1984
If, at any point, I was removed from the timeline I would cease to exist.
A sappling might not be a tree, but it’s only that sappling that can grow into that, specific, tree. How it grows, and how it changes, is up to time. But even if it loses a branch, or gets scalded in a fire- it’s still the same tree
I know what you mean. And I promise I’m not trying to argue, just exploring the boundary.
What if your body was injured and it became comatose. Then your brain was uploaded to a computer where you regained consciousness.
Are you the same person? Which one is you? If the computer were turned off, is the body you? If the body dies, is the mind you? What if your mind were loaded into a different body? What if your body has a different mind loaded onto it?
What I’m really trying to get at is: are you the composite of your body + your consciousness? How much would either one have to change to not be you?
My body is part of me, as is my mind. Whichever part of myself remains, is me. If I am brain-dead, the body on life support is me. If only my mind remains, that’s me. If they are seperated, but alive in one way or another, then each of those parts are also me
Though, for the record, I’d rather not be a brain in a jar nor hooked up to machines to breath. In both of those cases, given the choice, I’d chose death
As far as how little remains of me (or a thing) even if all that remains of me is a single cell. That’s still me.
I’d take it even further than that, actually because I’ve given this way too much thought in the past. I don’t have the mental fortitude to type it all out atm, but: I will happily argue that you are me, and I am you, and we are all temporary parts of a greater whole, operating as individuals on borrowed time with borrowed resources.
It depends on how much you want to zoom in/out. At a certain point one becomes the same as the other, like soup. Still, that soup wouldn’t taste the same without it’s individual ingredients, and each spice has it’s own flavor- even if there’s so little of it left, that no one can even taste it
I love it. Thanks for sharing.
Dara O’Briain has one of my favorite retellings of the incident
Don’t ever tell yourself you need this job like a hole in the head.
