Psychosurgery

Psychosurgery involves removing or permanently destroying brain tissue to treat severe psychological conditions, making it a controversial biomedical treatment.

In the 1930s, Antonio Egas Moniz developed a surgical procedure, severing connections between the frontal lobe and thalamus to alleviate mental disorders.

Walter Freeman popularized prefrontal lobotomy in the U.S., performing over 3,000 surgeries and promoting the procedure nationwide.

Lobotomies, widely performed from the 1930s to 1960s, often caused irreversible and profound brain damage, raising ethical concerns.

By the 1950s, psychiatric drugs and reports of memory loss, reduced emotion, and creativity diminished lobotomy's popularity.

Modern psychosurgery uses precise techniques, such as creating small lesions in brain areas like the amygdala, to treat severe OCD, depression, and bipolar disorder.

Now, committees known as Institutional Review Boards review the ethics and merits of surgical procedures before they are performed. This review involves evaluating the procedure's rationale, conducting preoperative and postoperative assessments, obtaining informed patient consent, and verifying the surgeon's competence, making psychosurgery a last resort amid ongoing ethical debates.