As a pioneer in the field of cognitive neuroscience, Brenda Milner is considered by many to be the founder of neuropsychology. Furthermore, Ella Milner has made a fundamental contribution to the understanding of the brain bases underlying the functioning of human memory.
In the 1950s, he studied, together with the neurosurgeon William Scoville, the case of Henry Molaison, perhaps the most famous amnesiac patient in the history of neuroscience. It is above all thanks to her that today we know that mnemonic processes are complex phenomena, linked to specific regions of the brain. Therefore, in this Psychology-Online article we will discover together Who is Brenda Milner, her biography, contributions to psychology and phrases.
Brenda Milner Biography
Born on July 15, 1918 in Manchester, England, Brenda Milner initially seemed destined for an artistic career. Her perspective of not being able to support herself with a degree in that field changed her mind, pushing her toward the Faculty of Psychology. When war broke out, all Cambridge researchers were invited to work for the Air Force and in those years she met her future husband, Peter Milner, an electrical engineer.
Two years later, in 1944, he informed him of his intention to leave the country to go with a group of physicists to Montreal, where they intended to begin research into nuclear energy. She followed him, but she certainly had no intention of living as a good housewife, taking care of the household chores: she thus began working for the prestigious University of Montreal, where she for some years taught animal psychology.
What Brenda Milner discovered
After obtaining her doctorate in 1952, Brenda Milner continued studying memory disorders caused by lesions of the cerebral hemispheres, which she had had the opportunity to face during her doctorate. Two years later, she was invited to Hartford to study the case of HMwhich changed his career and his life forever.
Milner’s exceptional discovery in this case pioneered later studies in neuropsychology, especially in relation to the role of the hippocampus and structures related to neurodegenerative pathologies, like Alzheimer’s. Furthermore, Milner observed that dementia patients cannot form new memories, while they retain past memories.
Given the importance of his case, after HM’s death in 2008, his brain was stored and analyzed for further studies. Brenda, on the other hand, is more than a hundred years old and has twenty prestigious recognitions in the medical field. continues working at the Montreal Neurological Institutealways with the same curiosity and passion.
Contributions to the psychology of Brenda Milner
Brenda Milner revealed her fundamental findings as a result of the study of a patient, HM, who in 1953 underwent surgery to control epilepsy. The intervention involved bilateral removal of the and associated structures.
Milner showed that HM could no longer retain memory of recent events due to the operation. The most relevant thing about HM, however, was that some aspects of his memory did not suffer at all from the effects of the operation. For example, their memory for remote events and their learning ability remained unchanged.
Below I explain in detail other results that emerged along with many other subsequent studies:
There is not just one type of memory
In other studies carried out by Brenda Milner it is shown that in humans, as in many other mammals, there is not a single type of memory. A first distinction is the one drawn between long-term memory and short-term memory: HM retained memories of events belonging to the distant past, but was unable to transform an immediate memory into a long-term memory.
Definition of the different types of memory
Additionally, Brenda Milner distinguished another difference that exists between memory for specific events, people, and places, known as , and memory for motor skills, such as riding a bicycle, or . HM could acquire new skills, although she did not remember learning them: damage to the hippocampal region had compromised episodic memory but not procedural memory.
As a result of thousands of studies following the pioneering work of Brenda Milner, it was possible clearly define these different types of memory.
The role of the hippocampus in memory
Furthermore, his discovery that a particular part of the brain, the hippocampal formation, plays a key role for memory has had a lasting impact and has led to extensive research into the precise role of the hippocampus and associated structures. .
Much of the research on neurodegenerative diseases, like Alzheimer’s, is closely related to the discoveries of Brenda Milner. Like HM, dementia patients are often unable to form new memories while retaining memory of past events. There is evidence that patients with dementia have degeneration of the hippocampal region.
In addition to work on the hippocampus and memory, Brenda Milner has made considerable contributions to our understanding of the roles of other parts of the brain, especially the frontal cortex, in information processing. He also studied the specialization of the right and left hemispheres of the brain and the ability of the two hemispheres to compensate for brain damage.
Brenda Milner Discoveries and Awards
Brenda Milner is one of the group of founders and pioneers of cognitive neuroscience, the link between the study of the brain and the study of mental processes. Furthermore, Milner has shown that a part of the brain, the medial temporal lobe, and in particular the hippocampus and related structures, plays a crucial role in memory formation.
Brenda Milner Discoveries
Brenda Milner drew from HM’s study some important principles regarding the biological basis of memory complex:
- Memory is a different mental function.
- Short-term and long-term memory can be stored separately. Loss of the hippocampus prevents the conversion of cues from one memory to another.
- At least one type of memory can be attributed to specific points in the brain.
- Beyond consciousness, there is an unconscious memory that resides outside the hippocampus and the .
Awards received by Brenda Milner
He has received a large number of national and international awards including 19 honorary degrees; He is a member of the Royal Society of London and the Royal Society of Canada, as well as a foreign affiliate of the United States Academy of Sciences and a member of many other domestic and foreign academic societies. Next, I explain to you some of his most notable awards:
- Officer of the Order of Canada (1984) and of Quebec (1985).
- First recipient of the Wilder Penfield Prize for Biomedical Research (Quebec, 1993),
- Member of the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame (1997),
- Gold Medal in the Jubilee of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II (2002).
- US Academy of Sciences Award in the Neurosciences (2004).
- Companion of the Order of Canada (2005).
- Grand Officer of the Order of Quebec (2009).
Today, Brenda Milner continues to contribute to the work of the international scientific community as a guest speaker or lecturer at European and overseas universities, and by serving on administrative committees and editorial staff.
Brenda Milner Quotes
Some of the most prominent expressions by Brenda Milner are:
- People think that, being very old, I should take on the role of professor emeritus. Well, I have no intention. I’m a nosy, you know, a very curious person.
- I’m happy if something I find is useful, of course. But it’s not what drives me. What drives me is curious.
- My parents were musicians. My father was a music critic and pianist, and he met my mother when she started taking singing lessons from him. Unlike my parents, it soon became clear that she was not good at music. However, when she was young, she was quite interested in literature, which was a comfort to them. Since I have always been good at languages, I was advised to enroll in a liberal arts school in Oxford. But I loved maths and physics, so I decided to do maths, even though everyone told me I was crazy, and they gave me a scholarship to Cambridge. It was 1936, long before World War II.
- It was a shock to my mother, who had always hoped that I would follow an artistic inclination, which would make her more involved. She had made peace with her mathematics at Cambridge, because it seemed like a good thing. But when she quit to go into psychology, I broke her heart.
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Bibliography
- Berva, GT (2021). Brenda Milner: something insegna il cervello di HM conservato nella formaldeide. Retrieved from: https://salute.robadadonne.it/brenda-milner/
- Petralia, S. (2020). Brenda Milner, the neuropsychologist who has revealed the mysteries of memory. Retrieved from: https://oggiscienza.it/2020/09/03/brenda-milner-neuropsicologia/