Brenda Milner: 100 years from the birthday

Abstract

Brenda Milner is a renowned British-Canadian neuropsychologist known as «the founder of neuropsychology». She was born about 100 years ago, and as a Cambridge graduate, she started her research carreer of a neurobiologist and psychologist in 1940s. Her comprehensive contribution to the development of clinical neuropsychology thereafter was marked by several awards including the Balzan Prize for Cognitive Neuroscience in 2009 and the Kavli Prize in Neuroscience in 2014 (shared with Marcus Raichle and John O'Keefe), as well as memberships in the Royal Society of London, the Royal Society of Canada and the National Academy of Sciences. She holds more than 20 honorary degrees at universities across Europe, Canada and the USA. Currently, Brenda Milner keeps working as a professor in the Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery at McGill University (Montreal, Canada) and a professor of Psychology at the Montreal Neurological Institute with her research mainly focused on the inter-hemispheric interactions. One of important contributions in neuropsychology by Brenda Milner was brought to the study of mechanisms of memory worsening in elderly. Due to the fact that most diseases associated with aging are characterized by memory disorders, this topic finds its high importance in the studies of gerontology. Working with patients who suffered the brain lobes removal, Brenda Milner received many new data on the complex and hierarchical organization of memory mechanisms in the brain. A unique case of an 86-year-old patient M.P. showed the brain changes due to lobectomy to remain stable for dozens of years. Neuropsychological methods have shown that in her 86 years, the patient with lobectomy was in no way inferior to her peers. Minor violations of verbal memory have been preserved throughout life without any deterioration. This long-term and rather interesting study is described in detail in the present article.