 |
The Day His World Stood Still - Page 2
The Fateful Surgery
The idea behind the surgery was simple. Seizures, as Scoville correctly reasoned, are caused by uncontrolled electrical impulses that start in a localized area and then spread throughout the rest of the brain. If one could remove the part of the brain where the seizures originated, it should be possible to cure the epilepsy. Henry had the most common form of the disease, called temporal lobe epilepsy, which meant that his seizures began in the tissue located on either side of his brain. Dr. Scoville removed a large chunk of Henry's right and left temporal lobes, which was a crucial decision because the brain is symmetrical and thus most important structures are duplicated. Altogether, Henry lost about a fist-sized portion of his brain, which encompassed (on both sides) the hippocampus, the amygdala, and the entorhinal and perirhinal cortices. As it turns out, the hippocampus is crucial for memory storage. When he lost his hippocampi, Henry became frozen in 1953, remembering very well the events before his operation but unable to create any new memories. He describes the experience like this:
"Right now, I'm wondering, have I done or said anything amiss? You see, at this moment everything looks clear to me, but what happened just before? That's what worries me. It's like waking from a dream. I just don't remember."
Previous... | Next Page...
|
|
