1848 25-year-old finis Gage is a worker at a railway construction site in Vermont, USA. He is in charge of blasting rocks. He punched a hole in the stone, filled it with explosives, and then detonated it. One day, when he was holding a steel bar nearly one meter long, with a diameter of 1.25 inch and a weight of 14 lb (about 6 kg), an unexpected spark detonated the explosive. Steel bars penetrated his head, entered from below his cheekbones and went out from above his brow bones. He flew more than 65,438+000 feet in the air and landed on the ground behind him. The workers who arrived immediately found that although he had a hole in his head, his words were as usual, his thoughts were clear and he felt no pain. He survived, but his behavior and personality changed greatly.
Before the injury, gage was a diligent, responsible and calculating person. He is good at sticking to his plan and has strong execution. After the injury, he was a completely different person. In the words of his colleagues, "he is no longer gage." He became restless, rude and impulsive, and his emotions broke out. Sometimes he curses others in the dirtiest language and can't stand any constraints. He kept making career plans in his mind and gave up immediately. After the injury, he can't do his previous job.
Gage's experience has become a classic case of neuroscience, because this incident shows that individual behavior seems to be determined by will, but the most fundamental determinant is physiological mechanism.
Gage lost the function of ventromedial prefrontal cortex, and destroyed its orbitofrontal cortex to a great extent. The orbitofrontal cortex will participate in complex decision-making process, which in turn involves people's sensitivity to risk, reward and punishment. Damage to this part of the brain can cause patients problems in impulse suppression and understanding of events, just like Gage.