Undoing lobotomy

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Since in today's world people realize that lobotomies were mistakes, did they try to undo them to any of the lobotomy patients that are still alive? I know it can't be completely healed, but I have one idea. The specific area that is targetted in lobotomy is a whitish liquid that connects parts of the brain (hence the other name "leicotomy", leico referring to that liquid). Perhaps it is possible to manufacture that liquid somehow and put it back in to the part of the brain it was drilled out of? And, as far as nerve damage, are there any medicines that would promote the re-growth of nerve tissues?

To my understanding. the white matter consists of neural pathways between neurons and the "insulation" around them. IOW, the white matter is composed of axons that connect neurons in different parts of the brain, and those axons are coated with a fatty substance to protect them (myelin). It sounds like the "white liquid" view might be an outdated understanding of what the white matter is.

A lobotomy would sever millions of neural connections between the pre-frontal part of the brain and the rest of it, and I can't imagine how that could be fixed.

(BTW, there's free software (TrackVis) and free data sets for looking at the white matter tracts of the brain, nowadays.)

I'd like to see footage of an interview with someone who's had a transorbital lobotomy.

There is a bus driver, still alive today, who was lobotomized at 12. He wrote a book "My lobotomy" (see http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... Id=5014080 ) I believe he was also interviewed about it.

I understand your point, but, seeing that a lobotomy ruins LIFES, don't you want to grasp at straws? Perhaps something that won't be neurons but just something LITTLE TINY TINY thing that would BARELY replace it? I mean if YOU were lobotomized, seeing that you won't have another life, wouldn't you climb up the wall just to undo it?

Or if you are dr Freeman, and suddenly you realize that everything you did to your patients was a big mistake. Wouldn't you want to undo it? I think guilt can make you climb up the wall to do ANYTHING, even if science says it is impossible.

^^^ That was a bit of an oddly confrontational response.

Go get a few neuroscience textbooks and start a Google search for "nerve regeneration medication." You're bound to find information on repairing neural connections.

http://tinyurl.com/3ljmvoa

Sometimes Humpty-Dumpty can't be put together again (at least in the here & now), and trying to do so in a desperate way is more likely cause further damage than help. (Say some "white liquid" was extracted from someone else's brain, and injected. Assuming there's no infections, perhaps the person's immune system becomes sensitized to myelin as a result, and thus begins attacking all of the myelin in the person's brain. So, now the person has multiple sclerosis in addition to being lobotomized.)

I have health problems (not as serious as a lobotomy, fortunately), in which desperately pursuing every avenue lead to becoming broke, in addition to finding no solution. However, I am thankful that I didn't become broke, remain ill, and also end up damaged due to some desperate/experimental/extreme/whatever treatment. Desperation doesn't change anything about the world; it just makes you more likely to take risks that maybe you shouldn't, and make doctors take risks that maybe they shouldn't. Grapsing at straws tends to be very dangerous. It's what parents who chelate or Lupron-inject their kids are doing.

I was actually reading a good book yesterday called, "Mad in America." It's about the treatment of "the insane," from the 1600's to the modern day in America. (And it gives a good history of lobotomy.) In the 1600-1700's, when beating a person and rubbing caustic mustard into their skin didn't cure them (doctors of the time thought that terror could cure insanity), they'd go for the riskier, more desperate treatments -- like injecting strychnine or mercury, or bleeding the person of 80% of their body's blood. There was also a device called the "swinging bed," which had effects on people that horrified even the doctors who were used to beating inmates on a daily basis. But, if "desperate measures" were needed, they'd use it. My point is that those inmates/"patients" would have been better off without those desperate measures.

As far as Freeman feeling guilt, I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for that. (That sort of thing is part of why I don't buy that "empathy" works the way it supposedly works.)

http://www.sntp.net/lobotomy/lobotomy.htm