HISTORY OF THERAPY
OF PSYCHOMOTOR EPILEPSY

1864 Morel, Fairet, and other French neurologists describe some elements of psychomotor epilepsy.

1888 Hughlings Jackson (Great Britain) provides the classic description of psychomotor epilepsy and its preceding aura.

1898 Jackson and Colman (Great Britain) localize the disorder to the temporal lobe of the brain.

1908 Horsley and Clarke (Great Britain) describe stereotaxic surgical techniques for use on animals.

1941 Jasper and Kershman (U.S.A. and Canada) show that the electroencephalogram of patients with psychomotor epilepsy is characterized by discharges from the temporal lobe.

1947 Spiegel and co-workers (U.S.A.) report the first stereotaxic surgery performed on a human being.

1950 Penfield and Flanagan (Canada) perform ablative surgery for psychomotor epilepsy, with good results.

1953 Heath and co-workers (U.S.A.) perform stereotaxic implantation of depth electrodes.

1958 Talairach and co-workers (France) begin chronic stereotaxic implantation of depth electrodes.

1963 Heath and co-workers (U.S.A.) allow patients to stimulate themselves, at will, via implanted electrodes.

1965 Narabayashi (Japan) reports on 98 patients with violent behavior treated by stereotaxic surgery.

1965 More than 24,000 stereotaxic procedures on human beings have been performed in various countries by this date.

1968 Delgado and co-workers (U.S.A.) attach "stimoceiver" (radio stimulator plus radio receiver) to freely ambulatory hospital patients with psychomotor epilepsy.

1969 Chimpanzee at Alamogordo, N.M., is directly linked by radio to a computer which programs and delivers his brain stimulations.

1971 Patient Harold Benson is operated on in Los Angeles.

M.C. 

Los Angeles