Emotional Intelligence and Neurophysiology

A new science gaining clarity and popularity is neurophysiology. An engaging way to begin to understand neurophysiology is to hear the story of Phineas Gage.  Mr. Gage’s skull is still on display at the Harvard Medical School.  If you were to see it, you would notice a gaping hole in the top of the skull, the residual of a workplace accident. As a result of a safety oversight, a three-foot metal rod was shot through Mr. Gage’s lower jaw and out the top of his head. The hole is where part of the skull was blown away from the impact. The rod actually entered through the lower left jaw and exited toward the top of the head skull.  The rod came to rest several hundred feet away from Mr. Gage with brain matter attached to it. Besides suffering a few immediate convulsions, Mr. Gage seemed fine within a few minutes, even talking with people about the incident. The biggest challenge in the days to come was fighting off the pursuant infection. After the infection was assuaged, the bigger challenge was dealing with the other long-term effects of the accident.

Although he did survive, Mr. Gage became a very different person. Besides the loss of one eye and the resulting notoriety he gained as a side-show type attraction, Mr. Gage had a dramatic and traumatic personality change. Prior to the accident, he was a model citizen (e.g. never drinking, never swearing, attending church) and model employee for Rutland & Burlington Railroad. He was considered an up-and-coming manager. After the accident, he became a caustic, drinking, carousing man who died alone and penniless.

What had happened? He was brain-damaged, and the damage resulted in a personality change. But the change was not really in his personality. It was in the processing of his desires and how those desires interacted with his environment and the subsequent filtering of his responses. The neurological data pathways in his brain – the ones connecting his desires with his emotions and his thinking - were irreparably damaged. The metal rod went through the frontal lobe of his brain. It missed the lower and inner parts of the brain which contain the limbic system.  Modern brain-mapping has revealed the limbic system in where the emotional and spiritual part of the person lives.  If this is interrupted, the conversations between these two systems is interrupted.  This system is also remedial!  That is the it can be retrained.  That is the premise of Dr Carlyle's concept called Spiritual Intelligence – rehabituating the neurological connections in the brain.  Learning to manage this part of us is what Dr Carlyle calls spiritual intelligence. Learn More!