User talk:Paulina77710

Hi Paulina- This is Kyla and I have done a bit of peer editing to your article. First,you should begin with a short, very generalized introduction to your article, giving a concise definition and perhaps the name of key players • Under the subtitle "History," you should focus more on the actual history here. I feel as though you jump into specifics without laying enough groundwork. Maybe talk more about the influences, zeitgeist, and leading players involved • Insert links to other articles when possible (i.e., Paul Broca) • Perhaps you could entitle one of the paragraphs "Localized Brain Function" • I encourage you to leave the images that are already there, I think they are a nice visual aid • Keep in mind when using scientific terms such as "occipital lobe" that the layperson may not be familiar and may require a bit more explanation • I think it would be beneficial to include an article on "Cognitive Processes • Perhaps you should include a paragraph regarding how all of this has benefited psychology and neuroscience, etc. • Be sure to include your notes. I hope all of this helps!

Phineas Gage
Hello! I reverted the changes regarding Phineas Gage you made to the Cognitive neuropsychology article, because those changes introduced several inaccuracies -- see my edit summary. But it's not your fault -- you were probably working from one of the many sloppy presentations of Gage that are so easy to find out there. If you read the Phineas Gage article carefully, you'll find in the notes links to papers discussing the many ways in which Gage is typically mis-characterized. Good luck! EEng (talk) 21:25, 5 April 2012 (UTC)


 * [moved here from UserTalk:EEng]]
 * Dear EEng,
 * Thank you for your imput about revising the excerpt on Phineas Gage. Right now I am doing a project for my History of Psychology class where we each have to revise a wikipedia article. I have gotten all of my information from peer reviewed sources/articles and .edu websites so I am sure that the information is accurate. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Paulina77710 (talk • contribs) 15:25, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi again, Paulina. Unfortunately, peer-review or .edu posting doesn't guarantee accuracy -- in fact, the extent to which a classic case can become grossly distorted over time, even in scholarly presentations, is perhaps the main lesson of the Gage case. Again I suggest that you read the Gage article carefully, including the detailed notes, in order to understand how hard it is to separate fact from fiction about the man.

If you want to continue discussing this, let's do so here instead of jumping back and forth between my talk page and yours. I'm watching this page. EEng (talk) 17:36, 16 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Dear EEng,
 * Thank you very much again for the suggestions; I will definately take them into consideration. I know that I am not an expert on Phineas Gage, but I have done a lot of work trying to find good articles to represent him accurately. I only expanded on the information you had already written, and I even kept some of it in the draft. I would like to put up a more detailed description about Gage to give the article a more well rounded feel and to give readers a better grasp of the topic of Cognitive neuropsychology.

Hi again Paulina: I've again removed the new material on Gage. Statements such as ''The injury to his prefrontal cortex seemed to have transformed him. After the injury he was impulsive and profane, with a total loss of inhibitions'' are standard in presentations of Gage but not supported by the evidence, and it does a disservice to readers to repeat them. And there was some apparent loss of function --though, except for blindness on the left, not motor or sensory -- at least termporarily; see Harlow 1868: "Mentally the recovery was only partial, his intellectual faculties being decidedly impaired, but not totally lost; nothing like dementia, but they were enfeebled in their manifestations, his mental operations being perfect in kind, but not in degree or quantity." EEng (talk) 01:05, 9 May 2012 (UTC)