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Jan. 10, 1961
Dr. Leo A. Kaplan Memorial Lectureship of the Phi Delta Epsilon Foundation: What the Brain Records. Dr. Wilder Penfield, Montreal Neurological Institute.
By means of lantern slides and diagrams Dr. Penfield presented the results of his studies on what the brain records.
Discussion
Dr. W. T. Liberson: I wonder whether you would consider the possibility of explaining by conditioning your fascinating observations. Suppose there is an epileptic patient with a focus in the temporal cortex who will present a local electrical discharge at the time of a certain event in his personal life. Then this epileptic discharge may become a conditional stimulus for the evocation of the memory of this event. When you stimulate during an operation the same point of the cortex you again reproduce this discharge. Because it is a conditional stimulus of the memory of a particular event, the patient will recall this event.