The name is absent

The Brain and Behavior 65
a patient has changed, both for himself and for his family,
e.g., whether he would be able to return to his normal activ-
ities after discharge from the hospital.

The factors described under these four headings make it
apparent that an intellectual deficit, if present, can not be
attributed solely to surgical removal of tissues from the
frontal lobes as Rylander had claimed. No matter how care-
fully the tests have been selected or how comprehensively
they sample the relevant behaviors, any changes in test per-
formance reflect changes in the patient’s total situation. Al-
though the use of a control group is certainly pertinent for
studies of this kind, it is at present impossible to know what
factors need to be controlled. Age and amount of education
can be equated, but hospitalization for a year and failure to
earn an income for that period of time may also need to be
considered. Other studies could be cited in elaboration or ex-
tension of these considerations, but Hebb’s conclusions seem
unavoidable: “no one has as yet shown that defects follow
a simple loss of tissue from man’s frontal lobes.” He does go
on to say, “the loss must, presumably, have some effect, but
it is hard to demonstrate and its nature is not yet clear”
(Hebb, 1945, p. 24).

(2) Systematic studies of operations made on the frontal
lobes for the therapeutic treatment of psychiatric patients
support Hebb’s conclusions about our knowledge of the role
played by the frontal lobes in intellectual functions. For the
present purposes it will be sufficient to describe briefly the
results of two of the most carefully controlled studies: the
Columbia-Greystone Project (Mettler, 1949) and the Second
Lobotomy Project of the Boston Psychopathic Hospital
(Greenblatt & Solomon, 1953).

The Columbia-Greystone Project (Mettler, 1949) was de-
signed to permit a systematic evaluation—medical, psycho-

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