Comparison Of Phineas Gage And The Teenage Brain

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Imagine that you were Phineas Gage's coworker looking at a huge iron rod go through the pointy end of a rod enter his left cheekbone, pass behind his left eye, through the front of his brain, and out the middle of his forehead just above the hairline. Phineas Gage: A Gruesome but True Story About Brain Science mentions the process of how the accident happened and the recovery after the accident, the Inventing Ourselves: The Secret Life of a Teenage Brain then cites the process of a teenage brain and showing the thought process of the teenage brain. Both of these texts help tie together the connection of Phineas Gage and the adolescent brain. Phineas Gage was involved in an experiment that went wrong and let's just say it ended with a tamping iron straight through his head. After the tamping iron accident, Phineas's behavior and brain begin to be more similar to an adolescent's behavior and brain because he has made some very impulsive, made risky decisions, and used lots of vulgar language towards women, coworkers, and his peers. …show more content…

Phineas' brain must have been damaged by the prefrontal cortex because he did have lots of similarities to an adolescent with their prefrontal cortex because according to the text, "the prefrontal cortex—which stops us acting on impulse and inhibits risk-taking—is not yet mature, and will continue developing throughout adolescence and early adulthood."(Blakemore 7) Phineas never really seemed very mature and he did seem very impulsive with a lot of the random jobs he liked to do. His frontal lobe had to be damaged because of the impact the accident had on Phineas's

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