psychosurgery

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  • Created by: Livbrown
  • Created on: 24-04-15 09:51

Psychosurgery intro

Biological approach (BioA) assumes our behaviour has a physical and biological cause, for example brain damage to certain area of the brain can influence our behaviour. The aim of psychosurgery (PS) invloves severing or otherwise disabling parts of the brain to alleviate some of the sever symptoms of mental illness. The BioA therefore links with PS as both focus on the brain influencing our behaviour therefore behaviour can be amended through brain surgery 

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Moniz and Freeman

In the 1930's Moniz developed Profrontal labotomy, which involved drilling holes into either side of the skull and inserting a leucotome in order to destory the connection to and from the prefrontal cortex. This procedure was a full length surgical procedure and required extended stay in hospital Due to the timely nature of Prefrontal Labotomy, Freeman developed Transorbital Labotomy. this involved inserting an intrument into the eye socket in order to access the brain. the intrument was moved around to destory connections between the pre-frontal areas and other brain areas. 

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Problems

The Transorbital labotomy was often effective in reducing the symptoms of patients however some severe side effects occure such as change in personality and even death. 

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Stereotactic Psychosurgery

Today stereotactic PS is used as a methof of last resort to treat mental illness. This involves using brain scans to locate exact points within the brain in order to sever connections very precisely.  For example, Capsolotomy involves inserting probes into the top of the skulland heating the tips of the probes in order to burn away small proportion of tissue near the hippothalamus. 

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Stereotactic Psychosurgery

Today stereotactic PS is used as a methof of last resort to treat mental illness. This involves using brain scans to locate exact points within the brain in order to sever connections very precisely.  For example, Capsolotomy involves inserting probes into the top of the skulland heating the tips of the probes in order to burn away small proportion of tissue near the hippothalamus. 

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Deep Brain stimulation

Deep brain stimulation is an alternative modern technique where wires are places in the patients brain. these are connnected to a battery pack in the patients chest so that the adjustable high frequency produced  can interupt brain circuitry 

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Effectiveness

With regards to effectiveness, modern psychosurgery has much higher success rates the traditional methods.  For example it has been reported by Cosgrove and Raugh 2001 that capsulotomy was effective in 67% of OCD patients and 55% of patients with major affective disorder 

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Comments

Bham369

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A few spelling mistakes and cards 4 and 5 are the same but other than that it's quite good :) 

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