Can you imagine living like Phineas? On the plus side, you don’t need to worry about what you will eat or wear! But, no playmates and others to talk to? From a human perspective, the life of a fish seems so meaningless; swimming from one end of the tank to the other. Well, thankfully, Phineas does not think so because he has been wired to live in the present. No worry, no anticipation of what will happen next!Daniel Gilbert, the author of Stumbling on HAPPINESS, which I am currently reading, share a gory but true story to highlight a key difference between the brain of human beings and animals - unlike animals, our brain have a huge frontal lobe - the part that helps us to live for the future. Co-incidentally, the guy in the story is also named Phineas! http://www.randomhouse.com/kvpa/gilbert/
PART I Phineas P. Gage was a foreman working on the construction of a railroad track outside the small town of Cavendish, Vermont. One of his duties involved filling the hole with gunpowder, adding a fuse, and then packing in sand with the aid of a large tamping iron. On a lovely autumn day in 1848 (Sep 13), Gage was momentarily distracted and forgot to pour the sand into one hole. Thus, when he went to tamp the sand down, the tamping iron sparked against the rock and ignited the gunpowder, causing the iron to be blown through Gage's head with such force that it landed almost thirty yards (27 meters) behind him. The three
foot (1 m) long tamping iron with a diameter of 1.25 inches (3.2 cm) weighing thirteen and a half pounds (6.12 kg) entered his skull below his left cheek bone and exited through the top of his skull, boring a tunnel through his brain and taking a good chunk of frontal lobe with it. Then, to everyone’s astonishment, he stood up and asked if a coworker might escort him to the doctor, insisting all the while that he didn’t need a ride and could walk himself. The doctor cleaned some dirt from the wound, a coworker cleaned some brain from the rod, and in a relatively short while, Phineas and his rod were back about their business
His personality took a decided turn for the worse, but the most striking thing about Phineas was just how normal he otherwise was. Had the rod made hamburger of another brain part, then Phineas might have died, gone blind, lost the ability to speak, or spent the rest of his life doing a convincing impression of a cabbage. Instead, for the next 12 years, he lived, spoke, worked and travel so uncabbagely that neurologists could only conclude that the frontal lobe did little for a fellow that he couldn’t get along nicely without.
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PART II
PART II
In the 1930s, a Portuguese physician named Antonio Egas Moniz was looking for a way to quiet his highly agitated psychotic patients when he heard about a new surgical procedure called 
frontal lobotomy, which involved the destruction of parts of the frontal lobe. This procedure has been performed on monkeys, who were normally quite angry when their food was withheld, but who reacted to such indignities with unruffled patience after experiencing the operation. Egas tried this procedure on human patients and found that it had a similar calming effect. This won him the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1949.
frontal lobotomy, which involved the destruction of parts of the frontal lobe. This procedure has been performed on monkeys, who were normally quite angry when their food was withheld, but who reacted to such indignities with unruffled patience after experiencing the operation. Egas tried this procedure on human patients and found that it had a similar calming effect. This won him the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1949. .
Over the next few decades, surgical techniques were improved and unwanted side effects were diminished. The destruction of some part of the frontal lobe became a standard treatment for cases of anxiety and depression that resisted other form of therapy. Contrary to the conventional medical wisdom of the previous century, the frontal lobe did make a difference. The difference was that some folks seemed better off without it.
PART III
PART III
Although patients with frontal lobe damage often performed well on standard intelligence tests, memory tests, and the like, they showed severe impairments on any test – even the simplest test – that involved planning. These patients might function reasonably well in ordinary 
situations, drinking tea without spilling and make small talk, but they found it practically impossible to say what they would do later that afternoon. Now, this pair of observations – that damage to certain parts of the frontal lobe can make people feel calm but that it can also leave them unable to plan – seem to converge on a single conclusion. What is the conceptual tie that binds anxiety and planning? Both, of course, are intimately connected to thinking about the future.
situations, drinking tea without spilling and make small talk, but they found it practically impossible to say what they would do later that afternoon. Now, this pair of observations – that damage to certain parts of the frontal lobe can make people feel calm but that it can also leave them unable to plan – seem to converge on a single conclusion. What is the conceptual tie that binds anxiety and planning? Both, of course, are intimately connected to thinking about the future. Thus, this frontal lobe – the last part of the human brain to evolve, the slowest to mature, and the first to deteriorate in old age – is a time machine that allows each of us to vacate the present and experience the future before it happens. No other animal has a frontal lobe quite like ours, which is why we are the only animal that thinks about the future as we do.
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Gage kept the rod which damaged him as a souvenir throughout his life, and it was buried with him in death. In 1867, when his skeleton was exhumed, the original rod was thus available with it. His skull is currently part of the permanent exhibition at Harvard Medical School’s Warrant Anatomical Museum in Boston, Massachusetts.
