Phineas Gage

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What knowledge do you have on brain science? Do you know how the brain develops as you grow from your teenage years into your early twenties? Have you heard of Phineas Gage? These questions are addressed in the texts “Inventing Ourselves: The Secret Life of the Teenage Brain” by Sarah Blakemore and “Phineas Gage: A Gruesome but True Story of Brain Science” by John Fleischman. This essay consists of comparing and contrasting the two texts and Phineas Gage compared to a teenager in adolescence. Phineas’s behavior is similar to that of an adolescent brain because when people are going through adolescence, they are more prone to make risky decisions without properly taking the risks into account. Or maybe using inappropriate language, or even …show more content…

When Phineas’s accident happened, he was at the very end of adolescence or he was finished. Phineas was 25 years old when his brain was damaged. Typically adolescence ends in your late teens or early twenties, so it is hard for us to tell if his brain was fully developed pre-damage. Phineas did not display all of the adolescent-like behaviors, but he displayed most of them. It states in “Phineas Gage: A Gruesome but True Story about Brain Science” by John Fleischman in paragraph 32 of the text “The new Phineas is unreliable and, at times, downright nasty. He insults old workmates and friends. He spouts vulgar language in the presence of women. He changes his mind and his orders from minute to minute.” When the author says the “new” Phineas, she means Phineas’s new personality post-accident. I also selected evidence from the text “Inventing Ourselves: The Secret Life of the Teenage Brain” by Sarah Blakemore, I found this piece of evidence in paragraph 5 it states “Around 12 or 13 years, and ending between 22 and 25 years. Many researchers today define adolescence as the interval between the biological changes of puberty and the point at which an individual attains a stable, independent role in society.” I chose this quote because it shows the ages of when adolescence is at its peak, as I mentioned previously Phineas was 25 when he had his incident. He was most likely done with adolescence by this time,

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