WORRY AND FEAR.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 70, 23 March 1940, Page 4

WORRY AND FEAR.

I SOUL SURGERY USED. MOST DARING OPERATION. NEW THEORY EVOLVED. (By THOMAS R. HI2XIIY.) WASHINGTON". Severing with a knife emotionimagination and past-future bridges in the human brain with what is perhaps the. most fantastically daring operation in modern surgery is reported by two f.'eorge Washington University brain socialists. Drs. Walter Freeman and James W. Waits during the last four years have performed nearly 100 of these, opera- j lions for a variety of mental diseases with various degrees of success and failure. They have followed up their j j patients with careful mental cxamina- ! tions. In several iases they have worked with local anaesthetic so. they could talk : with the person* on the operating table L and get a record of the changes that took place when the connections betweer * the front and back of the brain were . partially severed. When they reported their fust opera- . lions in this so-called "soul surgery" i there was no clear idea of what was happening. They only knew that they brought relief to some, persons, obsessed with worries that left them on the verge of insanity, bv removing two small cores in the cerebral cortex of the brain after boring two holes in the skull just above tho ears. In the years of success and failure that have followed they have approached a definite philosophy of the relations of human personality to the brain. Dr. Freeman has just reported to the. Medical Society of the District of Columbia, in summarising all the cases to date. Ended Worry and Fear. The one most pronounced result in a majority of the cases has been cessation of worry and fear. With fear has gone hate, in all cases, bccausc Dr. Freeman says one. hates only what one fears. There are. he stresses, two components of fear—the emotion itself and the } thing feared. Fear is always projected j into the future. There can be no fear j of something which is past, but only of I something which will happen. j One would not for example, fear death from a bullet which had been j fired, but only from one which might be fired in the future. Thus an animal I with 110 concept of the future probably j has no fear of death. j Neurologists have long known that { the emotion of fear is centred in one of the underlying nuclei of the brain, the thalamus. Diseases of the thalamus cause literally fear of nothing—just a vague, undefined terror. The operation, the two surgeons now believe, is cutting some of the connections between the thalamus and the high brain centres. But it also is cutting some of the connections between the 1 back and front of the brain, with farreaching consequences, for fear of consequences must be based on associations ; with the past. Out of nil this, Dr. Freeman says, a I new philosophy of brain functioning

has evolved. I The cerebral cortex, or top layer, of' the brain is split approximately in two halves breadthwise by a deep wrinkle— the so-called fissure of Rolando. Brain Areas Described. ■ Behind this fissure are the brain areas, for the most part rather minute, | which form the sites for all the sensai tiuns—.-ight, hearing, touch, heat and cohl, etc. The greater part of this back country of the mind is concerned with the co-ordination of the impulses coming in through these, senses. They are I tied together to form ideas, ami apparently. Dr. Freeman believes, are also coordinated with the experiences of the | past. Says Dr. Freeman: "The individual ' is brought by the postrolan cortex into relation with all that has gone before in his existence. Experience and intel- | ligence, the bases of behaviour, arc mediated by this part of the brain." Just in front of the fissure of Rolando and behind the forehead are the frontal lobes. They arc enormously developed in man. For years neurologists looked upon them as the centres of intelligence, but this hypothesis fell down when it. was found that they could largely be destroyed without very much decline in | intelligence. A limited part of the | frontal areas, however, governs voltniI tary movements, including those of the ■ tongue and throat muscles in speech. Without them man would be dumb. | The operations in which the. front of j the brain is partly disconnected from the back, Dr. Freeman says, have led [himself and Dr. Waits to "believe, that the majority of the frontal cortex is concerned with the projection of the whole individual into the future—with | the capacities for imagination, planning ami foreseeing consttjucnees. After the operation the frontal lobes themselves remain essentially intact, and the capacities for imagining and foreseeing t-'inain, but parts of the. "wires coi'wtinß them with the past" have One Patient Became Violent. The clearest demonstration of this, Dr. Freeman said, came from one patient who at first did not respond well to the operation and was ijuite violent for a few days. He slapped nurses and tore things from the hospital walls. After .he had done it he was quite • penitent. "Xmv that I have done it." he told Dr. Freeman after he was reprimanded for slapping a nurse, "[ can see that it was not the thing to do, but beforehand 1 couldn't sav whether or not it would be all right." In this particular case, temporarily at least, the connections had bre.n too thoroughly severed, so that the reaction was sufficiently exaggerated to make clear just what had happened. "Tile patient with rormallv functioning frontal lobes," says Dr. Freeman, "presumably can deline' the goal toward which he is working and estimate more or less closely the nearness with which he is approaching it. By projecting himself into the future in his mind's eve. he is calling upon his cortici'l mechanisms to synthesise past experience as his guide, and upon his emotional ■ mechanisms for the. driving force in the search for satisfactk.i, and avoidance of ■ all distress. 'Once the goal is set, he is further calling upon his cortical mechanisms to assemble the various parts of the problem and to select the proper course from among the many alternatives which present themselves to the completion of'

each separate step. Satisfaction or dissatisfaction depends upon recognition of the nearness with which ' reality approaches, the ideal. Some Primary Results. "Insight demands ■hat the individual shall erect in his mine! an imago of himself in relation to 'he outside, world, and he can do this only if he projects himself into the fulnia and sees himself as he should appear. In so doing he also compared (his juiago with that obtained from evidence furnished by his senses, once the act has been accomplished. "If this hypothesis is accepted it makes more easily understandable many of tlie observed facts concerning frontal lobe diseases. Inertia and lack of, ambition, reduction in cnr.eccntive thinking, loss of what is commonly called selfconsciousness, indifference to the opinions of others, satisfaction with performance, which may be inferior in quality may lie considered among the primary results. Euphoria, evasion. binding, talkativeness, aggressive behaviour, inattention and poor judgment might he classed among the secondary results. "Tins operation produces a certain change in the personality of the individual, characterised by a reorientation in the direction of introversion and a reduction in the into .est in self. It reduces self-consciousness and it promotes satisfaction with self and surroundings. The changed behaviour seems to depend to some extent on the original make-up and to some extent on the amount of frontal lobe, that is still 11: connection with the rest of the brail,."—X.A.X.A.