Charles Riley Biography

Roughly all science fields have a history of making discoveries by accident. Neurology, in particular, struggled in its early days to understand the brain due to the limited resources and information available about its numerous function. Humans that were victims of their own mistakes or had genetic disadvantages helped the scientific community gather more data about the beauty and misfortunes that the mind possesses. It is understandable that humans label everything, it is our nature; however, Charles A. Riley II is correct in Disability and the Media: Prescriptions for Change about the public and the media needing to stop using people that were unfortunate victims of inevitable events and instead, they should be covered in a fair and accurate

Our knowledge about how the human brain works is in debt to numerous unfortunate individuals. In the early 20th Century, they were considered medical miracles, but nevertheless some pitied them. By doing so, these people that were attempting to live normally were constantly reminded of their disability(ies) to a point of exhaustion. Henry Gustav Molaison, for example, is one of the most known patients in Neuroscience. Known by H.M. until his death, he was a “neuropsychological phenomenon” that helped discover significant advances in understanding the function of memory in the “hippocampus”. H.M.’s “severe epilepsy” was the result of a highly risky operation designed to cure the debilitating epilepsy he had suffered since childhood (Dr. Gibbs, Barry, The Rough Guide to The Brain, Dr. Vann, 2012). Two holes were drilled in the front of his skull, a portion that includes half of the hippocampus on both sides, and amygdala. Because the procedure left him with no ability to store or

Phineas P. Gage is a great example of people misinterpreting the true meaning of having a mental condition. Phineas Gage was an American railroad foreman, his job included packing explosive charges into the ground to make way for a new track. Unfortunately in 1848, an explosive charge blew too soon and sent an iron rod (3 feet 7 inches long and weighed 13 1/2 pounds) through his skull below the left eye, passed through the front left region of his cortex, and soared out of the top of his head. Gage’s freshly exposed brain placed him in weeks of coma and meningitis, but once he recovered, it appeared as if a new person was borned. It wasn’t bipolar disorder, Schizoid personality disorder, or other personality disorder, but it was a combination of many. The iron rod destroyed Gage’s region in the brain “ responsible for higher intellectual functioning” (Dr. Gibbs, Barry, The Rough Guide to The Brain, Ferrier, 1870). Moreover, his personality drifted away from the man everyone knew before the incident, therefore causing his family, friends, and other to avoid him. While the majority of people did indeed called him a medical miracle for surviving such traumatizing event, they also felt sorry because nothing was ever going to be the same. Gage knew how he was before but was not able to be that person. In