lobotomy

The lobotomy is a surgical procedure in the human brain. During the surgical procedure, nerve tracts are severed.The aim is to minimize existing pain.

What is the lobotomy?

The lobotomy is a surgical procedure. During a surgical procedure, nerve tracts in the central nervous system are severed in a targeted manner. The separation is permanent.

The nerves in the brain can no longer regenerate themselves or grow together again. This step is intended to alleviate and eliminate chronic pain or permanent discomfort in the patient. It affects nerve tracts that are located between the thalamus and the frontal lobe. The lobotomy is a very controversial procedure. Although the inventor of the method, the neurologist Walter J. Freeman, received the Nobel Prize for it in 1949, it was viewed critically as early as the 1950s.

The side effects that occur are very severe and usually life-changing. After an operation, the patient often suffers lifelong from severe disabilities and severe psychological consequences. Many of the patients required permanent medical care after surgery. They often had to be admitted to nursing homes that they could not leave until the end of their lives. For this reason, the method is no longer used by medical professionals today. Instead, various psychotropic drugs are used.

Function, effect & goals

The lobotomy was developed and used for people with severe mental illnesses. Initially, the lobotomy procedure was believed to be a breakthrough in medical possibilities.

People who were considered terminally ill and who were admitted as patients to a mental hospital or sanatorium should experience a permanent improvement in their state of health. The lobotomy was performed to primarily alleviate various mental illnesses or mental states. The doctors even assumed a permanent cure. If this was not achieved, they found that the results represented a significant improvement compared to the previous state. In a surgical procedure, nerve tracts classified as diseased were deliberately severed between the thalamus and the frontal lobe.

The aim was that signal lines classified as defective should no longer continue their work. According to the medical experts, perceptions and thoughts were transported in the nerve pathways that lead to the diencephalon. These connect with the feelings of the person and are wrongly connected in the patient. The cuts through the nerve fibers should cut through tissue in the brain. This formed the basis for the human organism to be able to form new nerve fibers. The healthy fibers should then positively change the personality of the sick person in the course of the healing process. The assumption was that the human brain is plastic and that after the loss of nerve fibers, new networks arise that can automatically be classified as healthy.

The same can be seen in nerve fibers in the face. After a few weeks or months, damaged nerve tracts regenerate, especially in the area of ​​the cheekbones. They are then fully functional and previous pain has often disappeared. Researchers used these findings and transferred their theories to other areas of the human organism. From a neuroscientific perspective, researchers got ideas about the regions of the brain in which certain processes take place. They saw the causes of mental illness, schizophrenia, anxiety or depression in defective nerve tracts and tissues of the brain. They also counted the addiction disease alcoholism.

Convinced that learning disorders or psychological stress caused by experiencing the war could also be healed by severing the nerve fibers, they performed the lobotomy. Patients who previously had abnormal behavior that could not be improved despite therapy or medication should become more sociable again.

The improvement of social behavior and personality was aimed at. Doctors promised relief from permanent internal tension, panic disorders or delusions. The belief that the human organism would heal itself through the emergence of new nerves led to the fact that diseased nerve fibers were often severed in a brutal way with a steel nail through the eye socket.

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Risks, side effects & dangers

The lobotomy has a number of side effects and enormous risks. These range from psychological complaints to lifelong severe disabilities. Affected patients were in need of care and had to take advantage of daily medical care.

There are documented cases in which home care could no longer be guaranteed despite great efforts. Existing illnesses such as depression or alexithymia increased. Patients showed apathetic behavior. The consequences were indifference and emotional blindness. Those affected were no longer able to experience emotions and develop feelings. The formation of empathy was no longer possible. In addition, patients suffered from decreased intelligence after the procedure. Existing learning disabilities were increased and new knowledge could no longer be acquired in the form it was before the intervention.

This meant that some patients were no longer able to cope with their everyday lives independently. They needed help with the simplest of tasks. Many patients have had a change in personality. Epileptic seizures occurred although they were not experienced prior to the procedure. After a lobotomy, the entire motor function was often restricted. Movement sequences could not be carried out completely. Despite therapeutic support, this condition no longer improved to a sufficient extent. In many cases, incontinence has been documented after the operation.