In the winter of 1850 Phineas goes to Boston so the doctors there can on their own as the doctors are in 1850 they look like gentlemen or at least they do in the oil portraits you would see a row of wise faces satin vests gold watch chains and sideburns photographs of doctors at work are rare, however, photographing someone or something in motion is difficult because the light-sensitive plates are very slow and a single exposure can cause a fall one minute and yet the year before Phineas accident a Boston photographer named Josiah Hawes sets up his camera in a surgical operating room and a daguerreotype he titles third operation using ether anesthetics. Most of us first encountered Gage in a neuroscience or psychology class, and the lesson of his story was both simple and stark: The frontal lobes house our highest faculties; they are the essence of our humanity, the physical embodiment of our highest cognitive powers. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay So when Gage's frontal lobes were beaten to a pulp, he transformed from a virtuous, clean foreman into a dirty, scary, sociopathic drifter. Simple as that. This story has had an enormous influence on scientific and popular understanding of the brain. Most unfortunate of all, this implies that whenever people suffer severe damage to their frontal lobes – as might happen to soldiers or victims of stroke or Alzheimer's disease – something essentially human may vanish. or psychology studies his case because it illustrates how the lobes of the frontal cortex, the two halves of the brain that meet on the forehead, are the seat of executive functions, those are your abilities to predict, decide and interact socially, unfortunately Phineas does not he is the only person to have suffered damage to the frontal cortex antonio and hanna damasio are renowned brains a husband and wife team of doctors regularly visit people who remind them of phineas gage the damasios are renowned brain researchers at university hospitals and clinics of Iowa and treat patients with the same type of fountain lobe damage that affected Phineas as Phineas these patients with frontal lobe damage have difficulty making decisions like Phineas with his 1000 pebbles do well on tests of logic and mathematics but make strange choices in trading situations their emotional responses are unpredictable they seem emotionally out of step with the rest of the world patients who come to Damasio's clinic are not victims of explosion accidents their brain injuries usually follow surgery to remove a tumor from deep in the frontal cortex this type of brain surgery is strictly a last resort to save patients' lives because even if the operation goes well the risk of side effects is high any damage to the frontal cortex can change behavior and personality forever, as the case of Phineas Gage demonstrates, oncology surgeons sometimes exhibit many of the same symptoms as Phineas all have damage to the frontal cortex all have difficulty making decisions about personal or social matters all react with little empathy and seem to consider emotion a foreign language The present study was conducted to test the hypothesis that individuals with substance abuse disorder have structural deficits in the prefrontal cortex. Prefrontal lobe volumes in subjects with histories of polysubstance abuse Total prefrontal lobe volumes (left and right hemispheres) were significantly smaller in the polysubstance abuse group