Brain Injury Help Blog

Who is Phineas Gage and Why is he Important?

As with any medical field of knowledge, treatment of traumatic brain injuries had to start somewhere. In Ancient Egypt, the physicians of the time actually opened the skull in an attempt to cure illness and to “free evil spirits”. Leonardo da Vinci did studies on all of the human anatomy including the brain, which he detailed in his drawings.

However, in “modern times”, the first real documented studies of someone with a traumatic brain injury that survived their injuries were about Phineas Gage.


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TBI: Temporal and Occipital Lobe Injuries

Due to their placement, the occipital and temporal lobes don’t get injured as often as other parts of the brain, but when they do, the difficulties that come with compensating and coping with those injuries are pronounced. The temporal and occipital lobes are the parts of the brain that deal most directly with sight and hearing, so any damage to these can have profound implications.

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TBI: Frontal Lobe Damage

When discussing Traumatic Brain Injuries, it is important to note that different areas of the brain control different functions. Scientists haven’t fully mapped all of the functions of each of the areas of the brain, however, the general areas and functions of the brain have been mapped, When a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) occurs, the doctors can determine which area of the brain has been damaged based on the person’s changes in personality, in their ability to remember and reason, and with body movements and functions.

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Neuropsychological Evaluation and Traumatic Brain Injuries

Other blog articles have shown that a traumatic brain injury (TBI) can be very subtle. Where a traumatic brain injury has occurred, there are definitive signs of injury. But unlike an open wound or a broken bone, evaluating the extent of brain injuries present and entirely different set of challenges for the doctors and diagnosticians.

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Surviving Traumatic Brain Injuries

Traumatic Brain Injuries may be perhaps the most understated injury or illness in America. Over 1.5 million people receive a brain injury every year, and of those, over 235,000 require hospitalization in order to treat those injuries. In North Carolina alone, over 5000 people per year are admitted to the hospital for a traumatic brain injury.

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TBI and Abuse

Abuse happens. We see it in the news every day. Shaken babies, battered wives, beaten children. All the time we hear or see or may even know of those involved in an abusive situation. While those situations are bad, the long term effects on the victims may be worse than the immediate injuries. The truly scary part is that the worst injuries sustained by an abuse victim may not even appear to be bad at all -- from the outside.

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