In 1848,Phineas Gage he survived a terrible accident that caused an iron bar to be embedded in his head after an explosion. In spite of everything, his vital functions were preserved almost intact and he becameone of the most famous cases in neuroscience, since the accident had destroyed a significant part of his left frontal lobe and, surprisingly, the damage hadradically changed his personality and behavior, to such an extent that “he looked like another person”, according to his relatives.
For many years, scientists have studied and debated the location of Gage’s brain damage and its effects. Now, for the first time, researchers at the University of California (USA) have accessed brain images obtained by tomography that had been lost a decade ago and have used them to reconstruct the damage caused by the accident in three dimensions. According to the magazinePLoS ONE, what they have found is that4% of the cerebral cortex was sectioned, and that more than 10% of the white matter of Gage’s brain was damaged. The white matter is made up of fibers that are responsible for connecting some brain regions with others, which allows us to reason and remember, and the fact that much of that “neural wiring” disappeared could explain why Phineas Gage’s behavior changed from overnight. Specifically, in Gage’s case, the area of missing white matter is the one that connected his left frontal cortex with the rest of the brain.
Cases like that of Phineas Gage – whose skull is currently preserved at Harvard Medical School – help researchers tomap the brainand to understand how the “neuronal map” is linked to the different functions performed by our thinking organ.
