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A lobotomy is a surgical procedure in which the brain's frontal lobes are disconnected from the rest of the brain. It is in the frontal lobes where emotional processes interact with high-level thinking and decision-making.
The first lobotomy was performed on human beings in 1935 by a Portuguese doctor named Egas Moniz. Moniz was so impressed with a report on how violent chimpanzees became passive and quiet after frontal lobe surgery that he decided to try it on several of his very agitated, emotionally disturbed patients.
The results were dramatic. Violent patients became quiet and manageable. Moniz won worldwide renown and eventually was awarded a Nobel Prize for his discovery.
Soon lobotomies were being performed in the United States. Thousands of emotionally battered soldiers returning from World War II were overcrowding psychiatric wards. Tranquilizers, which are now used to control violent behavior, had not yet been discovered. Believing that certain defective brain cells were the root of patients' behavioral problems, doctors disconnected these tissues in as many as fifty brains a day. Thousands of veterans, once violent, were now quiet. But the "cure" in many cases proved only temporary. Some lobotomized patients suffered bizarre personality changes. (One of Dr. Moniz' "cures" went berserk and shot the doctor.) Many were unable to make plans for the future or do anything but the simplest of tasks.
Finally, by the early '50s, the medical world began to regard the lobotomy "cure" as almost worse than the "disease." At about the same time, tranquilizers made their debut. But it was not before lobotomies had been performed on some 50,000 people, many of whom had slid into vegetablelike states.
This reflection back to the days of lobotomies illustrates how science learns from its experiments and from its mistakes. Today, the medical world knows that trying to surgically disconnect a "diseased" point in the brain is like trying to pluck out one thread in a closely spun spider web without tearing the rest of the fabric.
The techniques for studying the brain that you will read about in this section are being performed today. Medical science has come a long way since the days of primitive lobotomies, and yet lobotomies were performed in our very recent past. In thirty years, the techniques of today may look as primitive as lobotomies do to us now.
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