Eresko S O, Airapetov M I, Trofimov A N, Sevostyanova N N
Saint-Petersburg State University, 7-9, Universitetskaya Emb., St. Petersburg 199034, Russian Federation; e-mail:
Institute of Experimental Medicine, 12, Akademika Pavlova str., St. Petersburg 197376, Russian Federation.
Adv Gerontol. 2018;31(5):798-804.
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.
布伦达·米尔纳是一位著名的英裔加拿大神经心理学家，被誉为“神经心理学之父”。她大约出生于100年前，作为剑桥大学的毕业生，她于20世纪40年代开始了她作为神经生物学家和心理学家的研究生涯。此后，她对临床神经心理学发展的全面贡献体现在多个奖项上，包括2009年的认知神经科学巴尔赞奖和2014年的神经科学卡夫利奖（与马库斯·赖克尔和约翰·奥基夫共同获得），以及她成为伦敦皇家学会、加拿大皇家学会和美国国家科学院的成员。她在欧洲、加拿大和美国的多所大学获得了20多个荣誉学位。目前，布伦达·米尔纳仍在加拿大蒙特利尔的麦吉尔大学神经病学与神经外科系担任教授，并在蒙特利尔神经学研究所担任心理学教授，她的研究主要集中在半球间的相互作用。布伦达·米尔纳在神经心理学方面的一项重要贡献是对老年人记忆衰退机制的研究。由于大多数与衰老相关的疾病都以记忆障碍为特征，这个主题在老年学研究中具有很高的重要性。通过对接受脑叶切除手术的患者进行研究，布伦达·米尔纳获得了许多关于大脑记忆机制复杂层次组织的新数据。一位86岁的患者M.P.的独特病例表明，脑叶切除术后大脑的变化在几十年里一直保持稳定。神经心理学方法表明，这位接受脑叶切除手术的86岁患者在任何方面都不逊色于同龄人。一生中一直存在轻微的言语记忆障碍，但没有任何恶化。本文将详细描述这项长期且相当有趣的研究。
