By Malcolm Macmillan. 562 pp., illustrated. Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 2000. $39.95. ISBN 0-262-13363-6.
The story of Phineas Gage is one of the oldest, most intriguing,and most told tales in the history of neuroscience. The keyevents occurred in rural Vermont more than 150 years ago. Gage,a railroad construction worker, had an accident in which aniron bar was propelled through the front part of his head, producinga massive injury to his brain, presumably in his frontal lobes.That Gage even survived was miraculous enough; that he survivedwithout apparent changes in higher cognitive functions, includingspeech, learning and memory, and intellect, was almost beyondcomprehension. But Gage's fame and the . . . [Full Text of this Article]
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