21st Century Schizoid Boy

Random collection of some… interesting… medical techniques and conditions that had periods where they became popular… in the mid-20th century and even to the present.

Frontal Lobotomies consist of opening the skull and cutting connections from the frontal lobes to the brain, practiced mainly between the 1930s and 1950s.

The history of frontal lobotomy is a dramatic chapter in the development of medical treatment. Based on experimentally induced lesions in primates, lobotomies were introduced as procedures designed to modify the affect and behavior of hospitalized mental patients. Within 10 years, variations in surgical techniques were numerous, and the treatment was an accepted alternative in many hospitals in the United States.

History of frontal lobotomy in the United States, 1935-1955, Kucharski, 1984, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6379496.

Electroshock Therapy is a technique of inducing seizures in the brain using electrical shocks for therapy, practiced mainly between the 1930s and 1950s. An estimated 1 million people in the world are still subjected to it every year [Massachusetts General Hospital 2007 Article].

Almost half a century has passed since electroconvulsive therapy was added to psychiatry’s therapeutic armamentarium. In that time it has proved itself a safe, swift and most effective treatment for specific categories of depression and psychosis. As a result of the American Psychiatric Association Task Force Report on Electroconvulsive Therapy and the recently published National Institute of Mental Health Consensus Report on Electroconvulsive Therapy (1986), interest in this procedure has revived. Many past findings are being reexamined using more refined techniques and systematic study. Growing alarm concerning the drawbacks of psychotropic medication has also played a role in this current renaissance of interest in electroconvulsive therapy. The major tranquilizers can indeed control acute psychotic symptoms but they can also cause tardive dyskinesia. Antidepressants and lithium have contributed greatly to the management of affective disorders, but they can also cause electrocardiographic changes, postural hypotension, hypertensive crises, hepatopathy, endocrinopathy, and nephropathy. The more we learn about these medications the more we are compelled to moderate our early enthusiasm. This is particularly true of psychiatric patients with severe physical illness.

Electroconvulsive Therapy in the Medically Ill: Experience and Guidelines, Gabriel/Louis/Strain/Sacks LINN, Department of Psychiatry, Mount Sinai Medical Center, New York, New York, 1987, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1629301/pdf/bullnyacadmed00043-0059.pdf.

False Memory Syndrome is a controversial claim that there exists a medical or psychological condition in which a patient either generates or is induced to generate a memory of early childhood traumatic experiences such as sexual abuse. It was coined by Dr. Freyd (<joke>maybe he had an inferiority complex to Freud!</joke>) in 1992 after his daughter accused him of sexual abuse. It implicates many psychotherapists in inducing such memories in their patients through memory recovery therapy.

False memories are created in various ways. In the “misinformation effect,” people who see one version of an incident and then are presented with a second version will often recollect the altered version as correct. For example, if witnesses to a crime are later given a description in which key details of the crime are altered – for example, a car stops at a stop sign in one version and a yield sign in the other – they often remember having originally seen the altered event.

The misinformation effect may arise in a criminal investigation if repeated questioning inadvertently suggests a certain outcome or contains misinformation. Further, research has shown that people can easily integrate memories from multiple events into what they believe is a memory for a single event.

With NSF support, Stark and Yoko Okado from Johns Hopkins used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to understand how this misinformation effect works. In particular, they wanted to know what the misinformation effect can tell us about how false memories originate and what this might tell us about memory processes that lead to both true and false memories of events.

…

This study highlights the critical role of neural activity in particular brain regions during an event for determining whether a memory will be accurate or susceptible to distortion. Scientists can then improve their understanding of how memory distortions occur, with implications for situations ranging from eyewitness testimony to recovered repressed memories to the simple distortions that occur in our everyday lives.

“These distortions are showing us that our brain may only store fragmented, compressed bits of information,” Stark says. “When we retrieve that information, we expand it into a cohesive memory based on what information we’re able to retrieve, potentially leading to these false memories. Of course, once you’ve reconstructed it incorrectly once, you’re probably going to do it again, as that reconstruction probably gets stored away so that next time, you may just retrieve it and misattribute its source.”

True or False? When Memories Play Tricks, Craig Stark, Johns Hopkins University, October 14, 2004, http://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_summ.jsp?cntn_id=100658.