When I teach undergraduates what head injuries have taught us about the functioning of the brain, there is a clean, unrealistic quality to the descriptions available in text books. Clinical neuropsychology operates through the reassuring logics of double dissociation and...
brain injury
Dr Jill Winegardner is to receive the Practitioner of the Year Award from the British Psychological Society’s Professional Practice Board.
Six years ago Dr Winegardner came to Britain to work in the National Health Service as she was no longer able to do the kind of...
The brain injury surrvivor – Niamh Lowe
I celebrated my 21st birthday during April 2010. I completed my undergraduate degree in psychology in May 2010 and I started my first job with a Youth Advocacy Program in June 2010. However, all of these positive and...
THE truth is that I’ve been doing it so long, I’m not sure I can
really remember why I started. But I’m really glad that I stumbled into
this area of research.
I do recall that the stumbling took a while, though I’ve always been interested
in the brain, and...
Could you survive a small crowbar passing completely through your head? Most psychologists would answer ‘Yes’: almost all of them learned that Phineas Gage did. Although Phineas’ accident occurred 160 years ago this month, its consequences are still discussed in most...
The limits of consciousness are hard to define satisfactorily and quantitatively, and we can only infer the self-awareness of others by their appearance and by their acts.’ (Plum & Posner, 1983, The Diagnosis of Stupor and Coma, p.3)Martha is a young woman. Not...
Much has been written in The Psychologist (eg. Macmillan, 2008) and elsewhere about Phineas Gage. Many of us know how, as a result of a railroad accident in 1848, Gage lost part of the frontal area of his brain, and lived a different but...