When I first heard about History Day, I was reading a lot of nonfiction, and one of my books was about Phineas Gage. The book had a lot of information about things that neurologists had learned about the brain from his accident. I thought that he sounded interesting, and wanted to learn more. I thought that maybe I could do my History Day project on early neuroscience. Later, my mom was talking to a neuroscientist friend about how I was reading about Gage. He brought up H.M. I read a Washington Post article about H.M. Soon, I was very interested in him as well. I found that I was so caught up with these two patients that I wasn’t researching early neuroscience anymore. I narrowed down my topic to just focusing on these two patients. I believed
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Some of those notes cited sources that sounded like good things to use. I got more sources until I had a 2-foot tall stack of articles and books. One of the most helpful books was by Malcolm Macmillan, an Australian psychologist who did an intense study of Phineas Gage. He reprinted the papers of Dr. J.M. Harlow, Gage’s doctor in his book An Odd Kind of Fame: Stories of Phineas Gage. The title of my project was inspired by his book.
All of my primary sources are scientific papers. Some are early papers about the cases. Others cited one of the two cases. Those citing the Gage case have to do with with addiction or anger. Those citing H.M.’s case have to do with memory. They all show that both patients left a strong legacy in neuroscience research.
I have always liked posters or visual presentations, both looking at them and making them. I knew that I wanted to work alone on my history day project, because working in a group is harder to coordinate. So I chose to do an individual exhibit. I printed out and copied a lot of pictures that I could give credit to in my bibliography, including the cover of the magazine Science with pictures of how the tamping iron went through Gage’s brain and pictures of H.M. before and after his
Some of those notes cited sources that sounded like good things to use. I got more sources until I had a 2-foot tall stack of articles and books. One of the most helpful books was by Malcolm Macmillan, an Australian psychologist who did an intense study of Phineas Gage. He reprinted the papers of Dr. J.M. Harlow, Gage’s doctor in his book An Odd Kind of Fame: Stories of Phineas Gage. The title of my project was inspired by his book.
All of my primary sources are scientific papers. Some are early papers about the cases. Others cited one of the two cases. Those citing the Gage case have to do with with addiction or anger. Those citing H.M.’s case have to do with memory. They all show that both patients left a strong legacy in neuroscience research.
I have always liked posters or visual presentations, both looking at them and making them. I knew that I wanted to work alone on my history day project, because working in a group is harder to coordinate. So I chose to do an individual exhibit. I printed out and copied a lot of pictures that I could give credit to in my bibliography, including the cover of the magazine Science with pictures of how the tamping iron went through Gage’s brain and pictures of H.M. before and after his