According to recent news, there is a technique from a neurosurgeon known as Wilder Penfield that has made it possible to read thoughts by electrical stimulation. Surely at some point, no matter how hard you have tried to concentrate, you have not been able to remember something. It may be what you ate on a particular day or where you kept an object that you haven’t thought about for a long time, but we do not doubt that you have been in a situation like this at some point. Well, now, can you imagine that someone, just by touching your brain, could make you remember what you think you have forgotten with total clarity?
This is the known Penfield technique that has made it possible to read thoughts by electrical stimulation
Something very similar was achieved by Wilder Penfield, a neurosurgeon who, thanks to his peculiar way of studying and analyzing the brain, seeking not to cause harm or pain to his patients, managed to revolutionize the treatments and research of the time. Thanks to his work, today we know much more about how the brain works and how certain diseases, such as epilepsy, are generated. But who was this man, and how did he change the history of neuroscience?
Wilder Penfield, a neurosurgeon who revolutionized the research and therapies of his time by examining and analyzing the brain uniquely while avoiding harm or pain to his patients, accomplished something very similar. His research has greatly advanced our understanding of the functioning of the brain and the causes of conditions like epilepsy. He later became intrigued by the human brain, which prompted him to visit Europe and meet some of the top experts in neurology and neurosurgery, including the renowned neurosurgeon Harvey Cushing and Dr. Otfrid Foerster in Germany. His career, however, truly took off in Canada when he moved to Montreal and established the Montreal Neurological Institute, a facility that is now regarded as a global leader in the study and management of neurological disorders.
However, whence did this unexpected celebrity originate? Well, Penfield came up with a far less brutal method of operating on epileptic patients while they were conscious, in contrast to other doctors of his age who attempted to comprehend the brain through intricate procedures and tests that endangered the lives and health of patients. This kind of operation, even though it sounds a little unsettling, enabled him to administer little shocks to various parts of the brain and track the responses they elicited. Not unexpectedly, many took notice of his findings. Upon receiving the tiny electrical impulses, some patients reported feeling a touch on their palm without anyone touching them, while others had a remarkable reenactment of childhood experiences, as if they were viewing them on a screen.
With this, Penfield demonstrated that the brain was much more complex than previously thought. Through these experiments he affirmed that this organ is capable of storing memories in an organized way and, not only that, but that it is possible to activate them artificially. In other words, this completely revolutionized the then-current understanding of memory and consciousness. Also, Penfield was the first to succeed in studying epilepsy, a condition in which aberrant electrical discharges in the brain cause seizures, thanks to his novel surgical procedure. Epilepsy had been a medical mystery until then, and severe procedures that frequently failed were used to treat it.
Thus, Wilder discovered that some epileptic seizures originated in specific areas of the brain. Thanks to his technique, he was able to locate the “epileptic focus,” the exact region where the seizures began, and remove only that small part without affecting the rest of the brain. This drastically improved the lives of thousands of patients, many of whom were able to lead normal lives after the operation. But Penfield didn’t stop there; he also investigated the potential effects of epilepsy on cognition and consciousness. His research paved the way for contemporary therapies, such as more accurate surgeries and potent seizure-controlling drugs, and improved our understanding of how epileptic seizures were caused.
