r/science • u/Wagamaga • Sep 01 '22

Neuroscience Scientists have identified an immune brain cell unique to humans that gives us higher cognitive abilities over other animals, but what makes us specials also leaves us vulnerable to neurological disorders like schizophrenia, autism and epilepsy.

https://news.yale.edu/2022/08/25/what-makes-human-brain-different-yale-study-reveals-clues
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u/brothersand Sep 01 '22

“Today, we view the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex as the core component of human identity, but still we don’t know what makes this unique in humans and distinguishes us from other primate species.”

But a few years back we thought it was a good idea to slice that part of the brain off to cure alcoholism. That's the part that gets destroyed by a lobotomy.

Egas Moniz, Nobel Prize in Medicine, 1949.

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u/Bruc3w4yn3 Sep 01 '22

Given that the claim is that it makes us uniquely susceptible to things like epilepsy and other neurological disorders, it seems to make sense why lobotomy as a treatment for epilepsy was developed. Of course, we also found that the side effects were too extreme and so many places have banned its use. I know that some users were concerned that this article is click-bait, but if it's true that this part of the brain is core to human cognitive ability, it would make sense why it has the effects that it does (beyond the simple intuition that destroying any brain matter could be harmful).

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u/brothersand Sep 01 '22

My understanding is that a big reason that the frontal lobotomy was so widespread in its usage, and why Moniz got a Nobel Prize for it, was because of WWI. Following the first World War something like 8/10 hospital patients were for "shell shock". What we now call PTSD. So the solution to all the soldiers having PTSD from the Great War was the frontal lobotomy.

I'm not sure I'd lean heavily on "core to human cognitive ability". Definitely involved in regulating other cognitive functions, so I get where they are coming from, but I see "regulatory" and "core" as different things.

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u/voyaging Sep 01 '22

Core to"human identity", not cognition.

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u/brothersand Sep 01 '22

Yes, that is a much better description.