LING 1010 Lecture Notes - Lecture 30: William Beecher Scoville, Phineas Gage, Henry Molaison
The Brain
Phineas Gage (1823-1860)
• 24 year old foreman of railroad construction crew in Vermont in 1848
• Accidental explosion while working sent his tamping iron straight through his head
• Incident was famous because he survived for another 12 years, living a relatively normal
life
• Information of Gage is limited, but neuroscientists have tried to determine the extent of
his injuries based on scans of his skull combined with reports from witnesses and doctors
o Appears that the iron would have damaged the left frontal portion of his brain
o Information about the consequences is also limited, but written reports suggest that
1. Gage suffered a substantial change in personality, going from a mature,
responsible foreman to impulsive, rude, and aggressive
2. Gage was still able to perform relatively complex tasks like speaking, driving,
and living an essentially normal life
Henry Molaison (1926-2008)
• Born is Hartford and lived most of his life in Windsor Locks
• Experienced small seizures between the ages of 7 and 16, which were believed to be
because of a bicycle accident
• At 16, started experiencing large, full-brain seizures
o These were debilitating and life threatening, so he saw a neurosurgeon at Hartford
Hospital in 1953 (age 27) to try and have them corrected
o William Beecher Scoville, the neurosurgeon, removed parts of Molaison's medial
temporal lobe on both sides of his brain, and removed his hippocampus
• The consequences of HM's surgery were well studied between 1953 and his death in
2008. They were famously first described in Scoville & Milner 1957
• HM primarily suffered from anterograde amnesia: could not form new long term episodic
memories (think "First 50 Dates" movie)
• He helped researchers learn about the biological bases of memory
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