Word: thalamus
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...diagram). Then the impulse travels upward and soon crosses over to the opposite side of the spinal cord for its journey toward the brain. Along the way it triggers an automatic reflex that causes the man to flinch and tighten his gluteal muscle. After the impulse reaches the thalamus, a major (and evolutionally ancient) junction box at the base of the brain, where it is perceived as pain, it proceeds to the cortex. Only in this, the newest and most advanced part of the brain, is the entire painful sensation fully processed and interpreted...
Press-the-button relief depends on the fact that much perception of pain depends, in turn, on electrical nerve impulses passing through the thalamus, a junction box below the base of the brain. If the circuitry in the thalamus is interrupted or disrupted, even the in tractable pain of cancer may be allayed. The Ervin-Mark technique requires drilling holes in the skull (under a general anesthetic), then using elaborate stereoscopic instruments to place four electrodes at selected points in the brain, two of them in the thalamus itself. The electrodes are left in place and cause no pain...
From Dour to Cheery. Their patient, say Drs. Ervin and Mark, was "usually a dour and surly individual," at the best of times. After they fitted him with electrodes and gave him a little transistorized stimulator capable of sending a weak current through his thalamus whenever he pressed a button, he cheerfully reported absence of pain after 15 or 20 minutes. If he kept the current on for 45 minutes to an hour, the pain relief lasted as long as six to eight hours and gave him a night of uninterrupted, pain-free sleep - an invaluable benefit. During the last...
Surgeons listened in wonderment when Dr. Irving S. Cooper first described his "ice scalpel" and a new way to shoot liquid nitrogen through the brain to freeze part of the thalamus as a treatment for Parkinson's disease (TIME, July 6, 1962). Now, Dr. Cooper's cold is surgery's hottest technique - a tool for treating a dozen or more conditions in all parts of the body...
...rays help Dr. Cooper in locating the spot that he wants to freeze in the thalamus. But to make sure that his cannula is on target, he conducts a simple test. A small amount of liquid nitrogen is pumped to the cannula tip to cool the thalamus. Dr. Cooper asks the patient to raise his hand. If the hand stops shaking, Dr. Cooper is assured that his cannula is properly placed; more liquid nitrogen is pumped through the cannula to destroy permanently a larger area in the thalamus. Thus far, Dr. Cooper has used his technique on 1,000 patients...