Brain&Lobotomy+Notes-CMP

=Brain and Lobotomy Notes=

**Phineas Gage's story:**
The accident led scientists to discover that the frontal lobes were connected with behavior and personality.
 * //Injury://**
 * Occurred while Gage was working with dynamite on a railroad
 * 3-foot, 14-pound bar
 * Flew through his skull, and landed almost 100 feet behind him
 * Passed through his frontal cortex
 * Not sure if it went through both lobes or just the left side
 * //Recovery://**
 * Up and talking to his workers within minutes
 * Conscious, had a regular heartbeat, and both of his pupils responded to light normal
 * Full possession of his reason and free from pain
 * //Changes://**
 * Pre-accident: hard-working, responsible, and popular
 * Post-accident: indulged in the grossest profanity, stubborn, and impatient
 * When he was ready to return to work, his former employers would not re-hire him, due to the changes in his personality. 11 years after the accident, he began to experience seizures and died several months later.

**Lobotomies:**
In 1946, Walter Freeman (psychiatrist) completed the first "Trans-Orbital Ice Pick Lobotomy" His hypothesis was that mental illness was connected to the frontal lobes of the brain.
 * Sticking an ice pick through a person's eye in order to destroy their frontal lobe that causes them to be over-actively emotional
 * By the time Freeman died, he had completed over 2,500 lobotomies
 * Procedure:**
 * An electrical shock was given to patients to restart the brain
 * Took only 7-8 minutes
 * Designed to cut the connections to the frontal cortex in order to change a personality
 * It was supposed to make people better, but there was no guarantee