Neurosurgery or neurological surgery, known in common parlance as brain surgery, is the medical specialty that focuses on the surgical treatment or rehabilitation of disorders which affect any portion of the nervous system including the brain, spinal cord, peripheral nervous system, and cerebrovascular system. Neurosurgery as a medical specialty also includes non-surgical management of some neurological conditions.
Psychosurgery, also called neurosurgery for mental disorder (NMD), is the neurosurgical treatment of mental disorders. Psychosurgery has always been a controversial medical field. The modern history of psychosurgery begins in the 1880s under the Swiss psychiatrist Gottlieb Burckhardt. The first significant foray into psychosurgery in the 20th century was conducted by the Portuguese neurologist Egas Moniz who, during the mid-1930s, developed the operation known as leucotomy. The practice was enthusiastically taken up in the United States by the neuropsychiatrist Walter Freeman and the neurosurgeon James W. Watts who devised what became the standard prefrontal procedure and named their operative technique lobotomy, although the operation was called leucotomy in the United Kingdom. In spite of the award of the Nobel prize to Moniz in 1949, the use of psychosurgery declined during the 1950s. By the 1970s the standard Freeman-Watts type of operation was very rare, but other forms of psychosurgery, although used on a much smaller scale, survived. Some countries have abandoned psychosurgery altogether; in others, for example the US and the UK, it is only used in a few centres on small numbers of people with depression or obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). In some countries it is also used in the treatment of schizophrenia and other disorders.
A lobotomy or leucotomy is a discredited form of neurosurgical treatment for psychiatric disorder or neurological disorder that involves severing connections in the brain's prefrontal cortex. The surgery causes most of the connections to and from the prefrontal cortex, the anterior part of the frontal lobes of the brain, to be severed.
Trepanning, also known as trepanation, trephination, trephining or making a burr hole, is a surgical intervention in which a hole is drilled or scraped into the human skull. The intentional perforation of the cranium exposes the dura mater to treat health problems related to intracranial diseases or release pressured blood buildup from an injury. It may also refer to any "burr" hole created through other body surfaces, including nail beds. A trephine is an instrument used for cutting out a round piece of skull bone to relieve pressure beneath a surface.
Rose Marie "Rosemary" Kennedy was the eldest daughter born to Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy. She was a sister of President John F. Kennedy and Senators Robert F. and Ted Kennedy.
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Adrian Monk, portrayed by Tony Shalhoub, is the title character and protagonist of the USA Network television series Monk. He is a renowned former homicide detective for the San Francisco Police Department. He has obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and multiple phobias, all of which intensified after the murder of his wife Trudy, resulting in his suspension from the department. He works as a private police homicide consultant and undergoes therapy with the ultimate goal of overcoming his grief, taking control of his phobias and disorder, and being reinstated as a police detective.
António Caetano de Abreu Freire Egas Moniz, known as Egas Moniz, was a Portuguese neurologist and the developer of cerebral angiography. He is regarded as one of the founders of modern psychosurgery, having developed the surgical procedure leucotomy—better known today as lobotomy—for which he became the first Portuguese national to receive a Nobel Prize in 1949.
Walter Jackson Freeman II was an American physician who specialized in lobotomy. Wanting to simplify lobotomies so that it could be carried out by psychiatrists in psychiatric hospitals, where there were often no operating rooms, surgeons, or anesthesia and limited budgets, Freeman invented a transorbital lobotomy procedure. The transorbital approach involved placing an orbitoclast under the eyelid and against the top of the eye socket; a mallet was then used to drive the orbitoclast through the thin layer of bone and into the brain. Freeman's transorbital lobotomy method did not require a neurosurgeon and could be performed outside of an operating room, often by untrained psychiatrists without the use of anesthesia by using electroconvulsive therapy to induce seizure and unconsciousness. In 1947, Freeman's partner James W. Watts ended their partnership because Watts was disgusted by Freeman's modification of the lobotomy from a surgical operation into a simple "office" procedure.
An ice pick is a pointed metal tool used to break, pick or chip at ice. The design consists of a sharp metal spike attached to a wooden handle. The tool's design has been relatively unchanged since its creation. The only notable differences in the design are the material used for the handle. The handle material is usually made out of wood but can also be made from plastic or rubber. These materials can be better in terms of safety and allow the user to better grip the pick during use.
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Charles (Chuck) Howard was an American television executive, and a pioneer in television sports broadcasting.
James Winston Watts was an American neurosurgeon, born in Lynchburg, Virginia. He was a graduate of the Virginia Military Institute as well as the University of Virginia School of Medicine. Watts is noteworthy for his professional partnership with the neurologist and psychiatrist Walter Freeman. The two became advocates and prolific practitioners of psychosurgery, specifically the lobotomy. Watts and Freeman wrote two books on lobotomies: Psychosurgery, Intelligence, Emotion and Social Behavior Following Prefrontal Lobotomy for Medical Disorders in 1942, and Psychosurgery in the Treatment of Mental Disorders and Intractable Pain in 1950.
Adamo Mario "Amarro" Fiamberti was an Italian psychiatrist who was the first to perform a transorbital lobotomy in 1937. The technique was widely applied by Fiamberti in Italy and by Walter Freeman in the United States, with different tools. Fiamberti was later named Director of the Psychiatric Hospital of Varese, when it was opened in 1964.
Psychosurgery is a surgical operation that destroys brain tissue in order to alleviate the symptoms of mental disorder. The lesions are usually, but not always, made in the frontal lobes. Tissue may be destroyed by cutting, burning, freezing, electric current or radiation. The first systematic attempt at psychosurgery is commonly attributed to the Swiss psychiatrist Gottlieb Burckhardt who operated on six patients in 1888. In 1889 Thomas Claye Shaw reported mental improvement in a case of General Paralysis of the Insane after a neurosurgical intervention. This led to a lively debate in the British Medical Journal on the usefulness of neurosurgery for the treatment of insanity. In the 1930s the Portuguese neurologist Egas Moniz developed a surgical technique for the treatment of mental illness and called it "leucotomy" or "psychosurgery". Moniz' technique was adapted and promoted by American neurologist Walter Freeman and his neurosurgeon colleague James W. Watts. They called their operation, where burr holes are drilled in the side of the skull and the white matter is sliced through in order to sever the connections between the frontal lobes and deeper structures in the brain, lobotomy. In the United Kingdom it became known as the standard Freeman-Watts prefrontal leucotomy. British psychiatrist William Sargant met Freeman on a visit to the United States and on his return to England encouraged doctors at the Burden Neurological Institute in Bristol. The surgeon who performed Leucotomy operations there was Dr Harold Crow who treated my father after an unknown surgeon in London performed the operation on him without his consent, which had an awful effect on his personality and empathy after he was invalidated on returning to UK after working as an intelligence officer in Lille spying on German collaborators but was poisoned in his drink by a German officer with subsequent anxiety for his digestion and for our family. Despite this he worked all through his life to finance our education - programme of psychosurgery.
Charles Fleming is an American author. In addition to writing multiple books on multiple subjects, fiction and non-fiction, he has also had a long career in print and TV journalism. As a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times he was the automobile and motorcycle reviewer and editor of the paper's Hollywood business section, Company Town. He has written extensively as a freelancer, for publications as varied as Vanity Fair, Entertainment Weekly, and TV Guide.
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The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to psychiatry:
Psychosurgery, also called neurosurgery for mental disorder or functional neurosurgery, is surgery in which brain tissue is destroyed with the aim of alleviating the symptoms of mental disorder. It was first used in modern times by Gottlieb Burckhardt in 1891, but only in a few isolated instances, not becoming more widely used until the 1930s following the work of Portuguese neurologist António Egas Moniz. The 1940s was the decade when psychosurgery was most popular, largely due to the efforts of American neurologist Walter Freeman; its use has been declining since then. Freeman's particular form of psychosurgery, the lobotomy, was last used in the 1970s, but other forms of psychosurgery, such as the cingulotomy and capsulotomy have survived.
