The effects of cerebral lobotomy: a summary.

A description of the most common effects that lobotomy produced in patients.

Throughout human history, disciplines such as medicine, psychology, psychiatry and biology have had dark episodes.

From eugenics to concentration camp doctors and the defense that racial differences explain differences in intelligence, there have been many cases in which science has been wrong and has harmed society as a whole. The principle of "primum non nocere" ("first do no harm") has not always been respected, although there may have been good intentions behind it.

This is the case of lobotomy, a practice that was used with the aim of improving the lives of patients with mental disorders and freeing them from the bad life they led in the asylums of the mid-twentieth century. However, this practice proved to be very detrimental, giving rise to a series of negative effects that could not be said with certainty whether or not they led to an improvement in the quality of life of those undergoing surgery. In this article we will a review of the effects of lobotomy on the lives of the patients who underwent surgery, as well as a brief history of its effects.in addition to seeing briefly the historical antecedents of this technique.

Brief history of lobotomy

The lobotomy has been a technique that, since its beginnings, has been a huge controversy in the field of psychiatry. Its roots can be traced back to the primitive trepanations of ancestral cultures.. This type of intervention consisted of opening holes in the skull and "expelling" the evil spirits located in the head. According to their beliefs, these cultures held these entities responsible for mental disorders.

However, the lobotomy itself is much more modern, and was developed during the 20th century. The Portuguese António Egas Moniz was the one who laid the foundations of this technique through his first leucotomies.with the aim of treating and curing psychotic disorders. This intervention consisted of cutting the frontal lobe connections with the rest of the brain, arguing that this would reduce the problematic symptomatology. He won the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1949 for being responsible for this technique.

Subsequently, Walter Freeman, a physician with a background in surgery and neurosurgery, modified this technique from his contact with Moniz's leucotomy, and thus created the lobotomy. Reformulating the postulates of the Portuguese scientist, Freeman argued that behind mental disorders was an interaction between the thalamus and the prefrontal cortex, and that it was necessary to destroy the connections between both structures.

To carry out his technique, Freeman reached a point where he needed only about ten minutes, and an ice pick was all he needed as a surgical instrument. Here, the word "ice pick" is not a metaphor; Mr. Walter Freeman used tools taken from his own kitchen (according to one of his sons) in order to use them on his patients' brains.

The intervention was quite simple. First, he would take the aforementioned kitchen tool and insert it under the upper eyelid to reach the frontal lobe and, with a hammer, he would tap on the aforementioned connections. A particularity of this intervention, unthinkable today, is that it was a blind operation. what does this mean? It means that the lobotomist did not know exactly where he was going..

In short, a lobotomy consisted of sticking an ice pick into the patient's brain for about ten minutes and trying his luck. During the process, the patient was awake, and questions were asked. When what the patient said made no sense, it meant it was a good time to stop.

It must be said that At that time, little was known about the great importance of the frontal lobe, the region responsible for the brain.This region is in charge of executive functions: concentration, planning, working memory, reasoning, decision making...

Effects of cerebral lobotomy

Although the aim of this surgical intervention was to improve the patients' condition and reduce their symptoms, the fact is that, both in the short and long term, the patients showed signs of worsening. both in the short and long term, the patients showed signs of worsening of their condition.. In fact, even the very advocates of this technique and expert lobotomists acknowledged that after the intervention the patients showed changes in their personality and intelligence.

Walter Freeman himself coined the expression "surgically induced infancy" to refer to the postoperative state manifested by lobotomized patients. In essence, after lobotomy, many patients appeared to behave like children.. However, Freeman seemed to be convinced that this was only a temporary phase. According to this physician, after a period of "maturation" patients would behave like adults without disorder or with some improvement.

But in practice this did not happen. It was only a matter of time before the lobotomy technique was shown to be a clearly counterproductive surgery that was clearly detrimental to the health and autonomy of the patients.

The first symptoms manifested by the lobotomized persons were usually, stupor, a confusional state and urinary problems such as incontinenceand there was a clear loss of sphincter control. Along with this, there were alterations in eating behavior, manifesting an increase in appetite to such an extent that a great deal of weight was gained after the operation.

Personality was an aspect that was greatly affected.. There was less spontaneity, less self-care and a lower degree of self-control. The ability to take the initiative was reduced and there was less inhibition in the face of pleasurable stimuli. Inertia was another of the most common effects in people who were lobotomized.

As already mentioned, the frontal lobe, which is in charge of executive functions, was involved. It was therefore normal to see that capacities such as planning, working memory, attention and others were also diminished.. There was also impairment in social cognition, with some being unable to put themselves in the place of others because of this.

The "remedy" calmed the patients, causing their activation to diminish, but not because the disorder had magically disappeared, but rather because they had been turned into zombies. To make matters worse, many patients began to suffer convulsions after undergoing surgery.This supported the famous saying "the cure is worse than the disease".

However, the most clearly serious effect was death. According to some sources one in three patients did not survive this type of intervention, despite its short duration.despite its short duration. There were also multiple cases of lobotomized people who ended up committing suicide as a result.