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May 1953

CEREBRAL LOCALIZATION AND THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF PSYCHOSURGERY AND SHOCK THERAPY

Author Affiliations

NEW YORK

From the New York State Psychiatric Institute and Hospital, and the Neurological Institute.

AMA Arch NeurPsych. 1953;69(5):582-586. doi:10.1001/archneurpsyc.1953.02320290034004
Abstract

SOME OF the newer psychiatric treatments have their root entirely in neurological thinking and were developed in part by neurologists. Therefore it seems in order to discuss the question of how much these treatments have contributed to the localization of psychotic manifestations. Psychosurgery has made obvious contributions to cerebral localization, since the areas of operation are more or less well defined. Shock therapy, in which the areas affected are not clearly defined, has been included in this study because some observations, especially some differences between manifestations in shock therapy and those in psychosurgery, seem to permit certain conclusions.

Psychosurgery started at a time when neurology was shifting from limiting itself to the study of individual areas of the brain to a greater emphasis on the functions of the brain as a whole. Recent knowledge suggests that localization of mental function in certain parts of the brain is still possible, but

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