Some people just can't let a dead guy rest in peace. Or, more specifically, leave his brain alone. I am talking about, of course, Phineas Gage, the rorhrsach test that neuroscientists love to puzzle over. In an article that connects to an earlier TiPS post on "connectomes", yet another group of people engage in simulations of what kind of damage Gage's brain may have experienced at the time of his getting "spiked" and afterward. A popular media account of this research is provided here:
http://www.livescience.com/20386-phineas-gage-missing-brain-mapped.html The original article was published in PLoS One and can be accessed here: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0037454 Now, I understand that researchers have to justify their salaries and status by getting out research products such as this article but one really has to ask what is the point? First, let me quote from the article: |After receiving treatment and care from Dr. John Martyn Harlow over |subsequent weeks, Mr. Gage was able to recover sufficiently from his |physical injuries and return to his family in nearby New Hampshire. |However, reports of profound personality changes indicate that he |was unable to return to his previous job and caused co-workers to |comment that he was ‘‘no longer Gage.’’ Following several years of |taking manual labor jobs and travelling throughout New England and |eventually to Valparaiso, Chile, always in the company of ‘‘his |iron’’, he was reunited with his family in San Francisco whereupon |Mr. Gage died on May 21, 1860, nearly 12 years after his injury – |presumably due to the onset of seizures evidently originating from |damage resulting from the tamping rod incident. Several years |later, Dr. Harlow, upon learning of Gage’s death, asked Gage’s |sister’s family to exhume his body to retrieve his skull and rod for |presentation to the Massachusetts Historical Society and deposition |with Harvard Medical School where, to this day, it remains |on display in the Warren Anatomical Museum in the Francis A. |Countway Library of Medicine at Harvard Medical School |(Fig. 1a). It is unclear what the source is for this description and this is important because Malcolm Macmillan in his book "An Odd Sort of Fame" makes a convincing argument that there is little if any evidence of changes in Gage's behavior/personality after the injury. Although there is a lot of myth surrounding the post-injury Gage, there is little actual evidence. One would think that the authors of the article would be aware of this because THEY CITE MACMILLAN in the previous paragraph. Macmillan maintains a website on Phineas Gage and more info can be obtained there about his book and reactions to it: http://www.deakin.edu.au/health/psychology/gagepage/index.php It seems that the researchers ignore Macmillan's findings and go forward with what might be unwarranted assumptions. One wonders how many other unwarranted assumptions are made. Second, I don't really know what a connectome is but, as a mathematical entity, it apparently generates a lot of cool looking color figures and images (See Figure 2 and Figure 3). I'm going to leave it to the math wizards who have too much free time on their hands to figure out whether the math actually works or we have another case of voodoo neuroscience (e.g, MRIing dead salmon brain anyone?). Given how little we really know about Gage.as well as how individual differences in brain anatomy and physiology make assumptions about Gage's brain highly speculative, I am amazed that people put so much time and effort into trying to model his post-injury brain. Maybe their time would be better spent writing science fiction stories. -Mike Palij New York University [email protected] --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=17859 or send a blank email to leave-17859-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
