“The large part of the frontal lobe in front of motor cortex is called prefrontal cortex, and you may have heard of a type of brain operation in vogue on Earth around 1950 to 1960. This was the infamous prefrontal lobotomy, which was sometimes produced by inserting a knife through the back of the eye socket and damaging the brain on both sides. Patients’ relatives were told to bring dark glasses, because the treated person would have a pair of black eyes after the procedure. The prefrontal lobotomy was generally used to make patients more manageable before the major antidepressants and antipsychotics were discovered.

“The prefrontal cortex is believed to control complex intellectual functions such as the sequencing of behavior (Winn, 1995), and people with damage to this area often have great difficulty planning and carrying through a sequence of actions (Colvin, Dunbar, & Grafman, 2001). One of the most famous cases of accidental prefrontal lobotomy involved a man named Phineas P. Gage.” As you might guess, Professor Mindstein loves to tell this ‘colorful’ story. Usually his stories are more interesting than most faculty tales, but one hates to encourage such unnecessary discourse.