neurosurgical evidence

• P- the practice of surgically removing or destroying areas of the brain to control aspects of behaviour developed in the 1950s.
• E- Early attempts, such as those pioneered by Walter Freeman who developed the lobotomy, were brutal and imprecise and typically involved severing connections in the frontal lobe in an attempt to control aggressive behaviour
• E- Controversially, neurosurgery is still used today, albeit sparingly, in extreme cases of OCD and depression. For example, Dougherty et al (2002) reported on 44 OCD patients, who had undergone a cingulotomy- a neurosurgical procedure that involves lesioning of the cingulate gyrus.
• E- at post- surgical follow-up after 32 weeks, a third had met the criteria for successful response to the surgery and 14% for partial response
• L- the success of procedures like this strongly suggests that symptoms and behaviours associated with serious mental disorders are localised