Historical research on brain structure

• Phineas Gage:

  • iron rod through skull in 1948
  • had severe change in personality
  • seriouse damage to frontal lobe caused personality change
  • contributed to understanding that frontal lobe responsiable for expression of personality, probolem solving and impulse control.
• Rodger Sperry:

  • 1959 - 1968
  • experiments on split brain patients
  • severed corpus callosum
  • optic nerves cross over at optic chiasm so imput from right FOV processes in left hemisphere of brain and vice versa
• Walter Freeman:

  • lobotomy - severing neural connections between thalamus and pre-frontal cortex
  • belived to eliminate excess emotions and stabilise personality
  • goal: reduce agitation in participants
  • concequences: apathy, decressed concentration, numbness in emotional response
• what did sperrys experiments demonstrate:

  • corpus callosum required for full functioning of brain, left hemisphere responsable for understanding language and speech articulation, right hemisphere can recognise language but is unable to fully articulate it.
• Optic chiasm:

  • the crossing over of optic nerves at the base of the brain, directly infront of the hypothalamus