The Man Who Felt Nothing After His Frontal Lobe Vanished

The Man Who Felt Nothing After His Frontal Lobe Vanished

In 1848, a railroad worker named Phineas Gage survived an iron rod blasting through his skull — but the polite, reliable man his friends knew was gone. This is the story of how one accident became the founding case for everything we believe about personality living in the brain.

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Show notes

Primary medical reports by John Martyn Harlow (1848, 1868).

Henry J. Bigelow's 1850 interpretation of Gage's recovery.

Modern 2012 neural reconstruction of the tamping iron trajectory.

The 'Social Recovery Hypothesis' regarding Gage's time in Chile.

In this episode
  1. 01Intro1 min
  2. 02The Cavendish Incident2 min
  3. 03The Battle of the Reports2 min
  4. 04Mapping the Self2 min
  5. 05The Myth of the Ruined Man2 min
  6. 06Outro1 min
Sources
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The Man Who Felt Nothing After His Frontal Lobe Vanished — Fylom