Phineas Gage Final Test

“…Phineas Gage will have a horrible accident. It will kill him, but it will take another eleven years, six months, and nineteen days to do so. In the short run, Phineas will make a full recovery, or so it will seem to those who didn’t know him before…Phineas Gage’s accident will make him world famous, but fame will do him little good. Yet for many others…Phineas Gage will become someone worth knowing.”

How does this excerpt from the chapter “’Horrible Accident’ in Vermont” contribute to the text as a whole?

• It foreshadows the impact the accident will have on Phineas’s life.

• It emphasizes the role that Phineas Gage played in the development of today’s understanding of brain science.

• It provides support for the author’s biggest question posed to his readers: Was Phineas lucky or unlucky?

• It explains why the story of Phineas Gage still fascinates people more than 150 years after the accident occurred.

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“…Phineas Gage will have a horrible accident. It will kill him, but it will take another eleven years, six months, and nineteen days to do so. In the short run, Phineas will make a full recovery, or so it will seem to those who didn’t know him before…Phineas Gage’s accident will make him world famous, but fame will do him little good. Yet for many others…Phineas Gage will become someone worth knowing.”

Which additional passage from the same chapter contributes to the text in a similar way?

• “The most unlucky/lucky moment in the life of Phineas Gage is only a minute or two away.”

• “None of this progress to come will do Phineas a bit of good back in 1848. Instead, Phineas is saved by good luck and good care.”

• “Yet Dr. Harlow has private doubts about Phineas’s mental state. Phineas is just not his old self.”

• “It’s been 150 years since his accident, yet we are still learning more about him.”

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Why does the author include so much background information on the discovery of cells and microorganisms in the first chapter of the book?

• The information helps readers to understand how Dr. Harlow’s diagnosis of an imbalance of bodily “humors” helped heal Phineas after his accident.

• The information is critical in helping readers understand the medical knowledge gained from the study of Phineas Gage and his accident.

• The information helps readers to understand just how little was known about bacteria as the cause of infections at the time of Phineas’s accident and how fortunate Phineas was to have recovered from his injuries and resulting infections.

• The information helps to contrast Phineas’s care with modern medical care, but does not contribute to the reader’s understanding of how Phineas healed after his injury.

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What is the author’s primary purpose in writing the chapter, “What We Thought About How We Thought”?

• to suggest that doctors in 1850 were woefully lacking in knowledge of the human body and that Phineas Gage suffered harm as a result of his travels to Boston

• to introduce the key players in the establishment of what would later become the field of neuroscience, and how Phineas Gage’s case influenced the thinking of each of those individuals

• to give a broad overview of the two main schools of thought in relation to brain science in 1850: the Whole Brain advocates and the Phrenologists

• to contrast the understanding of the brain in 1850 with what we now know about the brain’s structure and function in order to introduce the idea that medical knowledge is constantly increasing and evolving

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In the chapter “Following Phineas Gage,” the author tells us the known facts of Phineas Gage’s life after he left Boston. There is a lengthy section about P.T. Barnum’s American Museum at the beginning of the chapter. Why does the author include this section in the text?

• to give evidence of how Phineas Gage was able to finance his travels to South America

• to support Dr. Harlow’s assessment that Phineas “was no longer Gage,” and give evidence to Phineas’s lack of social awareness

• to emphasize the point that inaccurate, unfounded, or exaggerated stories are common when researching remarkable events

• to impress upon his readers the seriousness of Phineas’s injuries, even after his physical recovery

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The author, John Fleischman, uses only a single source to tell about the factual events of Phineas Gage’s life after leaving Boston. Why? Choose ALL correct answers.

• Using more sources would have resulted in conflicting stories; using only a single source made the timeline simpler.

• The world’s leading expert on Phineas Gage, Malcolm Macmillan, believes that Dr. Harlow is the only reliable source.

  the author’s goals in writing the book.

• Leaving many questions unanswered causes his readers to make deeper connections to Phineas Gage and his story.

• Dr. Harlow received all of his information about where Phineas went and what happened to him after leaving Boston from only Phineas’s mother.

• The author’s focus for the book is how Phineas Gage’s injury contributed to what we now know about brain science. The day-to-day events of his life after physically healing from the injury are of little importance to the author's goal in writing the book

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‘The doctor who treats Phineas decides he has too much blood and draws off the “extra.” It’s outmoded treatment, even for 1860.’

What does the word outmoded mean as it is used in this selection?

• revolutionary

• worthless

• damaging

• old-fashioned

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What premise does the author intend to support with the inclusion of the photograph of the Concord stagecoach that was built in New Hampshire and then ended its useful life in Zimbabwe?

• Phineas Gage died far away from his home.

• The injury changed Phineas Gage. He was a lucky man.

• In spite of his injury, Phineas Gage led a fairly normal, remarkably adventurous, and well-traveled life.

• Phineas Gage found purpose in life by traveling to far off places.

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What is the central Idea of this book?

• The frontal cortex is responsible for making us act human, giving us the ability to make predictions, decide between two or more choices, and successfully interact with others.

• Phineas Gage was an incredibly lucky man.

• Phineas Gage, through his injury and the evidence left behind, made remarkable contributions to our modern understanding of the brain and how it functions.

• Many scientists worked together to solve the mystery of what happened to Phineas Gage.

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Which sentences would belong in a summary of the book? Choose ALL correct answers.

• Specific area of the brain do control specific functions and behaviors, but it’s not always as “logical” as we would imagine.

• It changed him into someone else, and yet Phineas figured out how to live as that new person for eleven years.

• Yet their [doctors in 1850] wrong theories – and Phineas himself – will steer our knowledge of the brain in the right direction.

• Students of neurology or psychology study his [Phineas’s] case because it illustrates how the lobes of the frontal cortex – the two halves of your brain that meet in your forehead – are the seat of “executive functions.”

• The emotional colors of their world seem to have drained away.

  The brain is a very small place, and a very small change in the path of the iron would have had very different results.

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