Brenda Milner
From Psy3242
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Background
Dr. Brenda Milner was born 15 July 1918 in Manchester England. 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.
Medial Temporal lobe
Dr. Brenda Milner has been very involved in the study of memory and other cognitive functions in humans. She studied the effects of damage to the medial temporal lobe on memory. She got to study one of the most famous patient in cognitive neuroscience, HM. Dr. Milner showed through many groundbreaking studies that the medial temporal lobe amnesic syndrome is an inability to acquire new memories while past memories and other cognitive abilities are intact. Patients with this syndrome had the ability to learn certain motor skills. Dr. Milner's studies introduced the concept of multiple memory systems within the brain. "She helped establish the importance of the cortico-limbic pathways for cognitive memories and cortico-basal ganglia pathways for procedural memories. Her studies made advances in understanding learning in both normal and functionally impaired humans."
Frontal Lobes
Dr. Brenda Milner helped to show the connection between the frontal lobes and memory. "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." This helped in understanding the connection between this part of the brain with memory function.
Lateralization
Dr. Brenda Milner described the lateralization of function in the human brain. She helped to find that the cerebral hemispheres are different in left-handed, right-handed and ambidextrous individuals. This relationship between hand preference and speech lateralization helped to understanding of the effects of early unilateral brain lesions on the pattern of cerebral organization at maturity. Dr. Milner's studies are among the first to demonstrate that brain damage can cause dramatic functional reorganization.
Recently
Dr. Brenda Milner has turned her attention to the study of identification of brain regions associated with spatial memory and language. She studies brain activity in normal subjects using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and positron emission tomography.
