1

The Human Brain

Let’s begin with some mysteries…

Mystery #1 – The curious case of Phineas Gage.

From Smithsonian Magazine: “In 1848, Phineas Gage, 25, was the foreman of a crew cutting a railroad bed in Cavendish, Vermont. On September 13, as he was using a tamping iron to pack explosive powder into a hole, the powder detonated. The tamping iron—43 inches long, 1.25 inches in diameter and weighing 13.25 pounds—shot skyward, penetrated Gage’s left cheek, ripped into his brain and exited through his skull, landing several dozen feet away”
Read more:

And the result was that Phineas Gage…

did not die.

“Though blinded in his left eye, he might not even have lost consciousness, and he remained savvy enough to tell a doctor that day, “Here is business enough for you.”

Gage’s name was etched into history by observations made by John Harlow, the doctor who treated him for a few months afterward. Gage’s friends found him“no longer Gage,” Harlow wrote. The balance between his “intellectual faculties and animal propensities” seemed gone. He could not stick to plans, uttered “the grossest profanity” and showed “little deference for his fellows.” The railroad-construction company that employed him, which had thought him a model foreman, refused to take him back. So Gage went to work at a stable in New Hampshire, drove coaches in Chile and eventually joined relative in San Francisco, where he died in May 1860, at age 36, after a series of seizures.”

So why did Phineas Gage not die from such a terrible accident?

And why did he end up behaving the way he did?

Mystery #2 – The Stroop Effect

A mysterious phenomenon was first discovered by psychologist John R. Stroop in 1935 and was hence named The Stroop Effect. You can experience it right now.

  1. The tester should obtain a copy of List #1, a list of words written in different colors.
  2. Before you show the subject the list, ask the subject to be prepared to go down the list as fast as possible and tell you the COLOR of the words going down the list.
  3. Show the subject the list and time their ability to tell you the COLORS of the words.
  4. Record the subject’s time to complete the task.
  5. Repeat steps 1 – 4 with list #2. Remember, the subject must tell you the COLOR of the words on the list.

The Stroop Effect
Subject / List #1 Time / List #2 Time

What do you notice when you compare the List #1 times with the List #2 times?

Why do you think this phenomenon occurs?

Mystery #3 – Why Fergie “Just Can’t Get Enough”.

925Thewolf.com

Who is Fergie? What’s her story?

Here’s an excerpt from a 2012 interview with Fergie:

“The 37-year-old said that she started doing drugs when she was a teenager. “I got into a scene. I started going out and taking ecstasy,” she confessed. “From ecstasy it went to crystal meth. With any drugs, everything is great at the beginning, and then slowly your life starts to spiral down. [I was] 90 pounds at one point. I started getting really paranoid. So I went one day into this church and I thought that the FBI and the SWAT teams were outside the church…so I had a conversation with God…and I said, “All right, if I go out there and the FBI and the SWAT team’s not out there, then it’s the drugs and I’m stopping.”

Fergie, like many people, started taking drugs for pleasure. But, like most people, the balance of power changed. Eventually, she could not control the drug; instead, the drug controlled her.

So why do drugs provide pleasure at first but then lead to a cycle of addiction?

Throughout this unit, you will be learning what you need to learn in order to solve each of these mysteries.