The Role of the Lesion Method in the Understanding of...

Understanding the relationship between brain and behaviour has been of great phenomenon in the field of neuropsychology yet a compound one. Studying the effects of brain functions on human behaviour requires us to operate with methods that allow us to dissect different aspects of mental functions. This paper therefore addresses one of the ways of assessing brain functions in human and non-human animals; the lesion method (in Banich, 2004). The basic concept of the lesion method is to determine a correlation between a lesion in a certain region of the brain and occurring behaviours. The lesion method strategy thus involves ablating or destroying a proportion of the brain in order to understand the functional nature of that specific brain†¦show more content†¦In addition, neuropsychological research so far has successfully demonstrated consistency in the loss of certain brain regions resulting in disorganised and inconsistent behaviours and the profound difficulties when performing certain tasks with Galen being the first to underpin the complexities that underlie brain-behaviour relationships (in Banich, 2004). One of the most compelling and well-known documented cases of severe brain injury and personality disorders comes from Phineas Gage (1848 in Passer, Smith, Holt, Bremner, Sutherland, Vliek, 2009). Gage was a road rail construction foreman who had experienced an iron metal rod passing right through to his skull at a very high-speed. The iron rod passed under his left cheek bone and excited right through to his head. The severity of Gage’s accident led to damage to his medial region of the prefrontal cortex whilst his motor and premotor cortex remained intact. Thus the damage to Gage’s frontal cortex led to significant changes in his social cognitive functions resulting in a dramatic change to his personality. Gage was no longer the man he used to be and suffered extremely from mood swings, loss of social inhibition, anger and along with other anti-social behaviours (in Passer et al., 2009). To what scientists call a ‘miraculous recovery’ Gage’s case is probably one of the most spellbinding documentations of time leaving a landmark inShow MoreRelatedThe Complex Mechanism Underlying Cognitive Processing1999 Words   |  8 Pagesprocessing, such as memory, learning, reasoning and language understanding. Theories construct frameworks to explain the complex mechanism underlying cognitive processing. 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