LING 1010 Lecture Notes - Lecture 27: Temporal Lobe, Phineas Gage, Henry Molaison

• School: UConn
• Department: Linguistics
• Course: LING 1010
• Professor: Akihiko Arano( T A)

Document Summary

The brain has internal parts, each part has a different function. He was working on railroad construction in 1848. An explosion sent a tamping iron straight through his head (from 25 ft in the air) which damaged the left frontal portion of his brain. He suffered a substantial personality shift, going from a mature responsible foreman to an impulsive, rude and aggressive man. He still was able to perform complex tasks such as speaking, living, driving, etc. He survived for another 12 years and lived a relatively normal life. Suffered seizures from age 7-16 thought to be due to a bicycle accident. At age 16, he experienced large (full brain) seizures. He visited a neurosurgeon to help correct them. The neurosurgeon removed parts of the medial temporal lobe on both sides of his brain. He could not form new long term episodic memories but could still form short term memory.