Neurophysiology Applied to Neurosurgery

Abstract

For more than five decades progress in functional neurosurgery has been boosted at every time surgeons and physiologists have accepted the idea that the best way to restore a function, or to control a functional disorder, through a surgical operation, was to share their knowledge and to elaborate together new concepts as well as innovative procedures to the benefit of patients. The two most famous examples of such an efficient collaboration are without doubt the couples formed by Herbert Jasper and Wilder Penfield in Montreal and by Jean Talairach and Jean Bancaud in Paris, who both contributed to settle the principles of epilepsy surgery, but through distinct and complementary approaches that are still a matter of debate nowadays. The same type of collaboration has also permitted significant breakthroughs in neurosurgical treatment of pain and movement disorders.