Gnosital |
07-02-2007 11:47 AM |
Quote:
Another brick in the wall wrote
#2 isn't really all that new. See Phineas Gage for a case study.
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Item #2 is exceedingly different from the Gage story, and at least one researcher ( Malcolm MacMillan ) debates that Gage's injury actually caused the extent of behavioral change that was attributed to it. Firstly, the damage to Gage was far more extensive than the circumscribed area of the ventromedial prefrontal that is mentioned in the cited study. Secondly, there were no objective records of Gage's behavior before the accident, and no objective accounting of his behavior after the accident, until Harlow's report published after Gage's death. Also, Gage's injury involved the left frontal lobe nearly in its entirety, while the cited research attributes a very specific and objectively measured function to a very specific area of the RIGHT hemisphere. So, actually, the subjective historical account of poor Phineas Gage that is repeated quite sloppily in every intro psych text is not even remotely as scientifically or medically valuable as this study.
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