Psychosurgery - History, Contemporary Psychosurgery, Patient Selection, Postoperative Care, Current Status

Psychosurgery is the alteration or destruction of brain matter in order to alleviate severe, long-lasting, and harmful psychiatric symptoms that do not respond to psychotherapy, behavioral, physical, or drug treatments. Psychosurgery involves opening up the skull or entering the brain through natural fissures such as the eye sockets, and injecting various tissue-altering solutions, removing or destroying brain tissue using various tools, or severing certain connections between different parts of the brain. Techniques used in this controversial and now rarely performed surgical procedure have changed greatly since its beginning in the 1930s.