prefrontal lobotomy

American  

noun

1. Surgery. a psychosurgical procedure in which the frontal lobes are separated from the rest of the brain by cutting the connecting nerve fibers.

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Etymology

Origin of prefrontal lobotomy

First recorded in 1935–40

Example Sentences

Something like estimated 75% of all cases of prefrontal lobotomy in the 1940s and '50s were women, and many of those women were older.

From Salon

He is trenchant on psychiatry’s failures, from prefrontal lobotomy to ‘care in the community’; critical of neuro-reductionism; eloquent on diagnosis debates; and ever aware of the human suffering at his chronicle’s core.

From Nature

Much of Shriver’s motivation came from the fate of older sister Rosemary, who spent her final 63 years in an institution after a disastrous prefrontal lobotomy left her incapacitated at age 23.

From Washington Post

The presence of his adored Rose, who would spend her life in mental institutions after being given a prefrontal lobotomy, feels especially vivid.

From New York Times

After she threatened to kill her father, she was committed to a mental institution where she received a diagnosis of schizophrenia and later underwent, to Tennessee’s enduring guilt, a bilateral prefrontal lobotomy.

From New York Times