NN+Lobotomy+Notes

Phineas Gage's Brain Injury

 * occurred in 1848
 * pole went through bottom of left cheek bone and kept going flying 100 ft. behind him
 * was conscience and walking and talking
 * everything was normal except he had a few personality changes
 * became fitful
 * engaged in the grossest profanity
 * impatient
 * swear a lot
 * stubborn
 * 11 years later started having seizures and eventually died
 * showed that the frontal lobes are essential in behavior

Lobotomy

 * in 1946, "a psychiatrist named Walter Freeman performed the first-ever transorbital or 'ice-pick' lobotomy."
 * thought that by cutting away part of the frontal lobes, he could take out certain emotions to cure mental illness
 * invented in Portugal in 1945
 * originally involved drilling holes into the brain rather than going under the eye