THE PSYCHOLOGICAL effects of cortical destruction in man have been recognized for many years. Even the effects of damage to an area as extensive as an entire hemisphere had been described decades ago, as Karnosh and Gardner1 have noted.
Over a hundred and fifty years ago, Francis Joseph Gall presented a case report on a man in whom the right hemisphere had been totally destroyed by suppuration and yet the intellectual faculties had remained intact up to the time of the death.
Much of our knowledge of the effects of decortication has come from animal operations, for example, Kellogg's2 long-time studies at Indiana University. Even earlier, Karplus and Kreidl3 had accomplished decerebration in animals, including apes. It was not until 1923 that Dandy4 performed the first hemispherectomy on man. Since his first published report in 1928, a number of articles in the literature have dealt with