Word: thalamus
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Lobotomy. Despite many variations (TIME, May 28, 1951), this is still essentially a "blind" operation in which the scalpel (leucotome) makes a series of highly destructive stabs through unoffending brain tissue before the surgeon can feel sure he has cut the nerve bundles that join the thalamus (probably the seat of basic anxiety) to the frontal lobes of the cortex (where anxiety and pain are felt intellectually). Los Angeles' Dr. Tracy J. Putnam has devised a way of driving two hollow needles precisely into the chosen nerve bundles. These are then destroyed by seeds of radon (a radioactive...
...three quick jolts of electricity-enough to start violent, involuntary convulsions before they lapsed into anesthetic coma. Next a thin, icepick-like leucotome was inserted under each eyelid, hammered home through the eye socket and into the brain. Carefully manipulating the two icepicks, the doctor severed the connection between thalamus and frontal lobes in the patient's brain. The entire operation took only ten minutes...
...defends two operations in which he has specialized. Freeman and Watts performed 624 prefrontal lobotomies. In this operation (see diagram), a hole is drilled through the skull back of each temple, and a dull, rounded knife is inserted to cut white nerve fibers connecting the frontal lobe with the thalamus, a neural relay station at the base of the brain. Freeman reports good results in 41% of such cases and fair in 34%, admits poor results in 22% (deaths...
Since important impulses to & from the frontal lobes must pass through the thalamus, a Philadelphia team headed by Dr. Ernest A. Spiegel decided to operate on this central clearinghouse. They drilled a hole through the top of the skull, sank a hollow needle through the brain. When its electric tip touched the thalamus, it seared some of the nerve nuclei. Few other U.S. surgeons have taken up this difficult operation (thalamotomy). Dr. Spiegel reports on 43 patients, about half of whom were improved...