it's really interesting because as a non surgeon we've all read about Penfield and
the whole notion of what it's like as you probe the brain in order to cut out
an area that as you would stimulate you can evoke some very very
interesting memories or other events
and that tends to be, he often was operating in the temporal lobe where
memories are thought to be stored or where they at least can be brought up
what we found
and much to our great interest
when we first started because we didn't know what we were going
to have happen this is not an area of the brain
that has been
operated on
for anything like this you know ever
so when this area of the brain is damaged it can be from an aneurysm it's just not an
area that anyone knows a whole lot about to be stimulating
but as you enter into this area
you don't actually get any of these
evoked memories but when we actually turned
the contacts on
we were
amazed
by the fact and i remember very distinctly the first patient
not the first contact we tested which gave her no
she had no response at any voltage but we got to the second contact and
got up to a moderate amount of current and she all of a sudden said
did you just do something i have this
intense sense
of calm or
relief And then she kind of
had this very kind of puzzled expression on her face
and she says it's just so hard to describe and I said well what's it like
do you feel like and i had this immediate thought oh this is like Penfield you know she's having
some memory thing and she goes
it's just so hard to describe it's like that first day of spring
when the crocus just pop up through the snow
and I'm going wait a minute are you seeing crocus? And then she goes no and she
kinda like throws our hand out and you have to imagine someone's in this frame
and are lying on a hospital bad and everyone sitting in a room and everybody
like comes to total attention
and she's a sweet woman and just kind of throws her hand out and says 'no, no' like 'you
idiot you know i'm not talking about seeing flowers' i don't know what
she's talking about, she goes
I'm trying to think of something that
evokes this kind of emotional state this kind of calm and satisfaction
it turned out this woman was a gardener
we lived in toronto
it was as if she
realized that first day when you walk outside in spring and you see the
flowers it's a sense of renewal it's a sense of it's the start of spring it was
the most amazing and poetic statement
and
she was groping quite frankly for something that was like the feeling she
had even though the feeling itself
was very ethereal and very hard to explain
that was one of the most amazing things although other patients will get a
change in state you could see it on their face before
they recognized it
it was as if you know when patients are this ill
there's a pain-ness to their face
if they walked past due on the street you always think boy that person must have
had a bad day
they look like that all the time
and when we would get to the right contact
we've got to where you can watch their facial expression and you can actually
just see it relax
or you'll have a patient say
it feels like, did you turn the lights up? there's like a
lifting there's
so many interesting phenomena
that to try it's not mapping it in the same way that Penfield did where
you can evoke a reproducible memory of an event or a time
but you're actually seeing that we are in the emotion control system
that is being controlled it sort of hijacked and as its released
it's a real state of
calm, relief, lifting
one patient said you know when you're depressed
you are so turned inward
when you're depressed you are
so turned inward
it doesn't matter when anybody outside you says you cannot pay attention to them
and whatever you just did
I can take attention away from myself
and attend to you
so again we're in this fundamental area of the brain that when it is
dysfunctional
it hijacks you
your emotions hijack anything else you can possibly do
and there's something about
this small amount of current in this very specific place
that allows the system to just re-equilibrate
it isn't about becoming happy or becoming engaged in a exaggerated way
it's just actually allowing your brain to be back in your own control
and figuring that out is the coolest
part of science that anybody can hope to participate in