Extraordinary Cases in Psychology: Part 3 of 4—The man with the hole in his head

Extreme cases of brain damage litter the history of neuroscience. Phineas Gage is perhaps the most famous. A railway worker in 19th-century Vermont, he managed to survive a catastrophic accident—the penetration of a metre-long iron rod through his head. What happened to Gage has become the stuff of legend, and fundamentally changed him and the way we think about the brain. NB: The All in the Mind podcast edition is a different program from the broadcast edition this week for copyright reasons. And, the streaming audio is on the BBC's website here.