Information about Brenda Milner
Dr. Brenda Milner CC (born 15 July 1918, Manchester England) has contributed extensively to the research literature on various topics in the field of clinical neuropsychology.
Dr. Brenda Milner has been a pioneer in the field of neuropsychology and in the study of memory and other cognitive functions in humans. She was the first to study the effects of damage to the medial temporal lobe on memory and systematically described the deficits in the most famous patient in cognitive neuroscience, HM. Through a series of landmark studies, Dr. Milner showed that the medial temporal lobe amnestic syndrome is characterized by an inability to acquire new memories while past memories and other cognitive abilities, including language, perception and reasoning are intact. Further, she showed that in patients with this syndrome the ability to learn certain motor skills remained normal. This seminal finding introduced the concept of multiple memory systems within the brain and stimulated an enormous body of research. Her work helped establish the importance of cortico-limbic pathways for cognitive memories and cortico-basal ganglia pathways for skills and procedural memories. These fundamental studies revealed the differences in episodic and procedural memory, concepts that we all take for granted now, and the brain regions that mediate each. This research laid the platform for advances in understanding learning in both normal and functionally impaired humans.
Dr. Milner has made major contributions to the understanding of the role of the frontal lobes in memory processing, in the area of organizing information. She demonstrated the critical role of the dorsolateral frontal cortex for the temporal organization of memory and her work showed that there is partial separability of the neural circuits subserving recognition memory from those mediating memory for temporal order. Dr. Milner described the inflexibility in problem solving that is now widely recognized as a common consequence of frontal-lobe injury. These refinements in the understanding of memory and exposition of the relevant brain regions revealed the diffuse nature of complex cognitive functions in the brain.
Dr. Milner helped describe the lateralization of function in the human brain and has shown how the representation of language in the cerebral hemispheres can vary in left-handed, right-handed and ambidextrous individuals (see handedness. These studies of the relationship between hand preference and speech lateralization led to an understanding of the effects of early unilateral brain lesions on the pattern of cerebral organization at maturity. Her studies were among the first to demonstrate convincingly that damage to the brain can lead to dramatic functional reorganization.
Many of these studies were done in preoperative and postoperative neurosurgical patients for whom Dr. Milner developed special cognitive tasks to elucidate the nature of the cognitive impairments from which they suffered. Further, the realization of the potential risk to cognitive function led Dr. Milner to develop the use of sodium amytal to reversibly inactivate parts of the brain to assess and localize the memory functions in patients prior to surgery. This method, pioneered by Dr. Milner, is now widely used throughout the world.
In recent years, Dr. Milner has expanded her research to the study of brain activity in normal subjects using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and positron emission tomography. These studies focus on the identification of brain regions associated with spatial memory and language, including the neural substrates of unilingual and bilingual speech processing. Dr Milner leads the research group at the Cognitive Neuroscience Unit of the Montreal Neurological Institute in the exploration of the anatomical basis of cognition. She is currently engaged in cognitive activation studies, exploring the brain regions involved in the performance of specific cognitive tasks. Her work continues to inform this research field characterized by complex and difficult problems that can only be unraveled by subtle and sophisticated means. Her wealth of knowledge and her vast experience with patients and healthy subjects is a valuable resource that she imparts to her students.
The large and varied body of research by Dr. Milner has had, and continues to have, a major impact on cognitive neuroscience and on clinical neuroscience. Dr. Milner’s studies have direct applicability to patient care, particularly for the neurosurgical treatment of patients with brain tumours or epilepsy. Her studies have a profound effect on the presurgical evaluation of patients and on specific surgical techniques that have resulted in world-renowned strategies to minimize the linguistic and cognitive deficits resulting from brain surgery. Her contribution to understanding memory and language function as well as hemispheric lateralization has informed research and potential therapies for debilitating conditions such as Alzheimer's disease and stroke.
Dr. Milner’s distinguished career has been recognized by numerous awards and memberships in the Royal Society (London), the Royal Society of Canada and the National Academy of Sciences (USA). Dr. Milner is actively engaged in research funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and other agencies, and she remains a major contributor to her field. At a recent symposium in her honor, Dr. Eric Kandel credited Dr. Milner with the creative and essential step of merging the fields of neurobiology and psychology to create cognitive neuroscience, a field that has direct and daily patient impact and one that catalyzes a vast array of basic research in the pursuit of understanding human cognition. In 1984 she was made an Officer of the Order of Canada and was promoted to Companion in 2004. Also in 2004, Dr. Milner was awarded the prestigious Neuroscience Award from the United States National Academy of Science.
Dr Milner received her undergraduate degree at the University of Cambridge in 1939, and her Ph.D. degree under Dr. Donald Hebb at McGill University in 1952. She joined Dr. Wilder Penfield at the Montreal Neurological Institute in 1950 and published landmark papers with Penfield and Scoville in 1957 and 1958. She is the Dorothy J. Killam Professor of Psychology, Montreal Neurological Institute and Department of Neurology & Neurosurgery, McGill University.
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Neuropsychology is an interdisciplinary branch of psychology and neuroscience that aims to understand how the structure and function of the brain relate to specific psychological processes and overt behaviors.
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A brain-computer interface (BCI), sometimes called a direct neural interface or a brain-machine interface, is a direct communication pathway between a human or animal brain (or brain cell culture) and an external device.
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Brain damage or brain injury is the destruction or degeneration of brain cells.
Brain damage may occur due to a wide range of conditions, illnesses, injuries, and as a result of iatrogenesis.
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Brain damage may occur due to a wide range of conditions, illnesses, injuries, and as a result of iatrogenesis.
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Clinical neuropsychology is a sub-specialty of clinical psychology that specialises in the diagnostic assessment and treatment of patients with brain injury or neurocognitive deficits.
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Cognitive neuroscience is an academic field concerned with the scientific study of biological mechanisms underlying cognition, with a specific focus on the neural substrates of mental processes and their behavioral manifestations.
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The human brain controls the central nervous system (CNS), by way of the cranial nerves and spinal cord, the peripheral nervous system (PNS) and regulates virtually all human activity.
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Neuroanatomy is the branch of anatomy that studies the anatomical organization of the nervous system. In vertebrate animals, the routes that the myriad nerves take from the brain to the rest of the body (or "periphery"), and the internal structure of the brain in particular, are
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Neurophysiology is a part of physiology. Neurophysiology is the study of nervous system function. Primarily, it is connected with neurophysiology and also to with neurobiology, psychology, neurology, clinical neurophysiology, electrophysiology, ethology, neuroanatomy, cognitive
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Phrenology (from Greek: φρήν, phrēn, "mind"; and λόγος, logos, "knowledge") is a theory which claims to be able to determine character, personality traits and criminality on the basis of the shape of the head (i.e.
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Wikipedia articles related to Brain Function
- Visual system
- Auditory system
- Olfactory system
- Gustatory system
- Somatosensory system
- Visual perception
- Motor cortex
- Broca's area (aka Language Area)
- Lateralization of brain function
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Arousal is a physiological and psychological state of being awake. It involves the activation of the reticular activating system in the brain stem, the autonomic nervous system and the endocrine system, leading to increased heart rate and blood pressure and a condition of
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Attention is the cognitive process of selectively concentrating on one aspect of the environment while ignoring other things. Examples include listening carefully to what someone is saying while ignoring other conversations in the room (the cocktail party effect) or listening to a
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Attention is the cognitive process of selectively concentrating on one aspect of the environment while ignoring other things. Examples include listening carefully to what someone is saying while ignoring other conversations in the room (the cocktail party effect) or listening to a
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Consciousness is a characteristic of the mind generally regarded to comprise qualities such as subjectivity, self-awareness, sentience, sapience, and the ability to perceive the relationship between oneself and one's environment.
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Decision making is the cognitive process leading to the selection of a course of action among variations. Every decision making process produces a final choice. It can be an action or an opinion. It begins when we need to do something but know not what.
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Executive functions is a term synonymous with cognitive control, and used by psychologists and neuroscientists to describe a loosely defined collection of brain processes whose role is to guide thought and behaviour in accordance with internally generated goals or plans.
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In the philosophy of language, a natural language (or ordinary language) is a language that is spoken, written, or signed (visually or tactilely) by humans for general-purpose communication, as distinguished from formal languages (such as computer-programming
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Learning is the acquisition and development of memories and behaviors, including skills, knowledge, understanding, values, and wisdom. It is the goal of education, and the product of experience.
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In psychology, memory is an organism's ability to store, retain, and subsequently retrieve information. Traditional studies of memory began in the realms of philosophy, including techniques of artificially enhancing the memory.
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Gross motor coordination addresses the gross motor skills: walking, running, climbing, jumping, crawling, lifting one's head, sitting up, etc.
Fine motor coordination
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Fine motor coordination
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perception is the process of acquiring, interpreting, selecting, and organizing sensory information. It is a task far more complex than was imagined in the 1950s and 1960s, when it was proclaimed that building perceiving machines would take about a decade, but, needless to say,
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Planning is both the organizational process of creating and maintaining a plan; and the psychological process of thinking about the activities required to create a desired future on some scale.
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For planning in AI, see .
Planning is both the organizational process of creating and maintaining a plan; and the psychological process of thinking about the activities required to create a desired future on some scale.
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Problem solving forms part of thinking. Considered the most complex of all intellectual functions, problem solving has been defined as higher-order cognitive process that requires the modulation and control of more routine or fundamental skills (Goldstein & Levin, 1987).
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Thought or thinking is a mental process which allows beings to model the world, and so to deal with it effectively according to their goals, plans, ends and desires.
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Arthur Lester Benton, Ph.D., (October 16, 1909 - December 27, 2006) was a neuropsychologist and Emeritus Professor of Neurology and Psychology at the University of Iowa.
He received his A.B. from Oberlin College in 1931, his A.M.
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He received his A.B. from Oberlin College in 1931, his A.M.
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Kenneth M. Heilman is an American behavioral neurologist.
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Biography
Early Life and Career
Kenneth Heilman was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. He attended and graduated from medical school at the University of Virginia in 1963...... Click the link for more information.
Phineas P. Gage (1823 – May 21, 1860) was a railroad construction foreman who suffered a traumatic brain injury when a tamping iron accidentally passed through his skull, damaging the frontal lobes of his brain.
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Norman Geschwind can be considered the father of modern behavioral neurology in America. He was mentor to the cadre of behavioral neurologists who would shape the subspecialty for the 20th and early 21st centuries.
Dr.
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Dr.
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Elkhonon Goldberg (1946) is a neuropsychologist and cognitive neuroscientist.
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Biography
Elkhonon Golderg was born in Riga, Latvia in 1946, studied at Moscow State University with the great neuropsychologist Alexander Luria and moved to the United States in 1974...... Click the link for more information.
Donald Olding Hebb (July 22, 1904 – August 20, 1985) was a psychologist who was influential in the area of neuropsychology, where he sought to understand how the function of neurons contributed to psychological processes such as learning.
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