Word: limbic
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Aggression. What has made this revival possible is a better understanding of the brain itself. As neurologists recognized the drawbacks of lobotomy, they began to shift their attention to the limbic system (which has diffuse interconnections throughout the brain), theorizing that it was somehow connected with mood and behavior. Others found that psychomotor epilepsy-a condition that can result from injury and makes some of its victims violently and uncontrollably aggressive-is often accompanied by the presence of tiny epileptic foci, or small scars, in the temporal lobe. Some doctors concentrated on the amygdala, a small, almond-shaped body whose...
...knowledge led to a whole series of new operations. Dr. Glenn Meyer, a University of Texas neurosurgeon, reports good results with a process called cingulotomy. Boring holes in the skull, he uses an electric current to cauterize and destroy bundles of nerve cells that connect various parts of the limbic lobe, or feeling brain. Performed on 59 patients, some of them schizophrenics or chronic alcoholics, the operation has produced a vast improvement in half, slight improvement in a fourth and no detectable change in the others...
...medical and biologically-oriented parts of Violence and the Brain give a complete accounting of the present level of knowledge concerning the functioning of the brain in violent behavior on a fairly elementary level. Diagrams of the limbic brain system are given, and brain wave recordings are charted, but smooth, nontechnical explanations keep the material within easy reach of a general audience. In fact, some of the casualness in discussing the medical applications of surgical techniques may seem a bit gruesome to the uninitiated. A dozen pages of pictures illustrate the drilling of holes in the human skull...