Electrical Activity after Stimulation and Electrocoagulation of the Human Frontal Lobe §

In his Salmon Lectures in 1950, Fulton"0 suggested that radical lobotomy should be abandoned in favor of more restricted lesions in the medioventral quadrant of the frontal lobe. Delgado and Rosvold9 and Rosvold and Delgado' have shown that frontal lobe syndrome in the monkey may be produced by electrical stimulation or electrocoagulation of small areas in the head of the caudate nucleus, a structure which is within the limits of the medioventral quadrant of the frontal lobes. As a form of therapy for human patients we have performed electrocoagulation of certain points in the frontal lobes which were selected after functional exploration by means of electrodes implanted within the brain for a period of several days. A discussion of the preceding work in animals"5 and of the technique' has been published elsewhere. Implanted electrode techniques in human patients have also been used by Brazier, et al.,' Heath," and Sem-Jacobsen, et al."7 In this paper we submit information concerning electrical activity observed in the frontal lobes of nine patients after electrical stimulation and electrolytic destruction of selected points in these lobes.