Transorbital Leucotomy

Abstract

The operation of transorbital leucotomy recently described in the Lancet by Freeman (1948) was originally devised and carried out by Fiamberti in 1937 very soon after Moniz had introduced the original operation of leucotomy. Meyer, Beck and McLardy (1947) have shown that degeneration of the central portion of the pars parvicellularis of the dorso-medial nucleus of the thalamus was correlated with a lesion involving areas 9, 10 and 46 in the middle frontal gyrus. The transorbital method might now be said to follow almost logically on the work being done at the Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center and at the Greystone State Hospital, New Jersey, by a team of 96 (!) collaborators. Brodmann areas 9 and 10 and in some cases part of area 46 of the cerebral cortex are removed by an open bone-flap operation. This work is still in its infancy, and is not yet published apart from a summary by Nolan Lewis (1948). The entire project is to be described in a volume, The Human Frontal Lobe, to be published at an early date.