Word: thalamus
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...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...
...prefrontal lobotomy-the last resort for schizophrenics and manic-depressives. Using a technique devised by the University of Lisbon's emeritus professor Dr. Antonio Caetano de Abreu Freire Egas Moniz, skilled neurosurgeons cut away important nerve connections in the prefrontal brain lobe (a seat of reasoning) and the thalamus in the rear of the brain (a way station for emotional responses). The operation's aim: helping the patient to a better adjustment with his environment...
...like a surveyor's transit; its four legs are mounted on a ring fixed to the patient's skull by a plaster cast. At the top is a hollow needle containing a fine electric wire. X-ray pictures are taken to establish the exact position of the thalamus; the legs of the instrument are adjusted to place the needle exactly over it. The patient is anesthetized, and a piece of bone directly under the needle is cut out by conventional surgery. Then the needle is lowered like a well-digger's rig into the thalamus...