Case Studies

Question 1

Phineas Gage

Answer 1

Background:
Phineas Gage, is recognised throughout the psychological field of study for having provided a significant amount of insight into the localisation of brain function, following a severe railroad brain injury. In addition, the case study elucidated a link between brain trauma, prefrontal brain damage, and personality change.

Before: described as intelligent, polite and extremely hardworking.

After: He became loud and impulsive, having a lack of judgement and restricted thought process. Personality changes such as moodiness and dishonesty (frontal lobe: personality)

Question 2

Sarah Scott

Answer 2

-Suffered from a stroke at the age of 18, which led her to develop brocca’s aphasia, thereby resulting in partial loss of the ability to produce language (spoken, manual, or written), although comprehension generally remains intact.

Question 3

HM

Answer 3

In Milner’s study, HM had anterograde amnesia - that is, he could not transfer new information to long-term memory; however, he still had access to many of his memories prior to his surgery. However, the fact that he could create new procedural memories shows that memory may be more complex than the MSM predicts.