Question

In the early days of medicine, frontal lobotomies were performed to treat psychiatric disorders. This archaic procedure was typically done using a sharp instrument to poke through a thin bone in the skull that would allow access to the frontal lobe of the brain. Based on your knowledge of the cranial bones, which bone of the orbit of the eye do you think physicians would "poke through"?

a) Ethmoid bone
b) Sphenoid bone
c) Zygomatic bone
d) Maxilla bone

Answer 1

The bone that was typically penetrated in a frontal lobotomy through the orbit of the eye was the ethmoid bone. This procedure was thought to alleviate symptoms of various psychiatric conditions.

Step-by-step explanation:

In the early days of medicine, to perform a frontal lobotomy, which was used to treat a variety of psychiatric disorders, physicians utilized a sharp instrument to access the frontal lobe of the brain via the orbit of the eye. The bone that was typically penetrated in this procedure was the ethmoid bone, which forms a significant part of the medial wall of the orbit. The prefrontal lobotomy severed connections between the prefrontal cortex and other regions of the brain, which was thought to alleviate symptoms associated with psychiatric conditions, including personality disorders, mood disorders, and psychoses.