Against the Current: Wilder Penfield, the Frontal Lobes and Psychosurgery

No specialty alone: the Wilder Penfield strategy.

A bedside conversation with Wilder Penfield.

1976, I served as an intern in internal medicine at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montréal, Quebec after graduating from Emory University School of Medicine. At that time, interns were still given their own on-call room. My pre-morning rounds ritual consisted of a maple donut and orange juice at the hospital coffee shop, while also devouring The Star, The Gazette and La Presse. Olympic fever w...

Wilder G. Penfield (1891-1976), neurosurgeon and scientist.

Founder and first director of the Montreal Neurological Institute, Wilder G. Penfield established the "Montreal Procedure" for the surgical treatment of epilepsy, a brain disorder characterized by sudden and recurrent seizures. His revolutionary work is the very foundation of neurological studies. He was celebrated as 'the greatest living Canadian.'

Wilder Penfield in the Age of YouTube: Visualizing the Sequential Activation of Sensorimotor Areas across Neocortex

Flow of electrical activity across neocortex is essential for many sensorimotor tasks. Whether this flow is localized or spreads widely is unknown. Ferezou et al., imaging activity across the cortical mantle in awake mice, show in this issue of Neuron that touch by a single vibrissa leads to a rapid depolarization of primary sensory and motor areas that subsequently spreads across most of cortex.

Regions of the Frontal Lobes

1. Primary Motor Cortex (M1, Brodmann area 4): The primary motor cortex is located on the precentral gyrus just rostral to the central sulcus. It is the source of cortical neurons that will project to the brainstem and spinal cord to activate neurons involved in the control of voluntary movements. It receives input from the neighboring primary somatosensory area (S1, on the postcentral gyrus) a...