Chapter 9:
In chapter nine, Slater investigates some hard, biological proof that memory has cellular mechanisms that can be measured and monitored. Slater recalls a story of a man called Henry, who was having severe, lifestyle-limiting seizures. Henry has a procedure done by Dr. Scoville, in which his entire hippocampus was excised. As a result of the procedure, Henry lost all capabilities of forming new memories, suggesting that the Hippocampus is at a minimum a part of the path to creating new memories. Eric Kandel, an Austrian survivor of Kristallnacht, is a psychoanalyst and neurological scientist that graduated from Harvard. Kendal performed some seriously cool experiments on sea slugs that physically proved that there are biological memory mechanisms.
Kandel removed aplysia neurons and preserved them in a broth, allowing him to manipulate them into communicating with each other. As Kandel observed the neurons communicating, he witnessed the two neurons physically growing synaptic connections, creating a pathway for communication and establishing the most primitive proof of memory mechanisms. What is even more interesting, is that the more that Kandel made these neurons communicate with each other, the larger and stronger the synaptic connection became. This allowed Kandel to move beyond simple, short-term memory to long-term memory. This also helped enforce the old adage: “use it or lose it.”
Chapter 10:
Chapter ten is devoted to Lobotomies, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Antonio Moniz is a Portuguese doctor that won the Nobel Prize in 1949 for his role in psychosurgery, specifically the Lobotomy. One interesting fact about Moniz, is that he suffers from a severe case of gout and therefore is highly dependent upon helpers during surgery, where he normally advises from a managerial role. Before Moniz actually performed a psychosurgical procedure, he first had to find a way to visualize the brain in its entirety, which is something that was not previously possible. He was able to do this by injecting a dye into the patients neck and then perform X-rays on the head of the patient. Through this technique, Moniz was able to more accurately visualize the inner workings of the brain.
The first patient that Moniz performed a lobotomy on was Mrs. M., who was severely depressed and suffered from acute anxiety attacks. Instead of using a blade to cut away the brain synapses, Moniz injected small amounts of alcohol, which killed the surrounding tissue, including the synapses. Post-procedure interviews with Mrs. M. showed that the procedure was successful in suppressing her depression and anxiety attacks. However, due to lack of future follow up and recording, little is known of how the patient reacted to the lobotomy long term.Another scientist, Dr. Freeman from the United States, created a different form of lobotomy in which a sharp punch-like tool was forced through the soft spots of the skull located in the ocular cavity. This is the form of the lobotomy that I have heard the most about and envision when someone mentions a lobotomy.
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