Medicine: Little Black Box

Schizophrenia (split personality) is the most mysterious, and perhaps the commonest, of mental disorders. It is hard to diagnose, hard to treat, and it accounts for at least 35% of U.S. insane-asylum inmates.

Psychiatrists would like to have some sure method of telling whether a patient is schizophrenic—and whether treatment is doing him any good. Dr. Robert G. Grenell, at Yale University's department of neuroanatomy, added a new idea to an old gadget, evolved a technique that he hopes will answer both questions.

The presence of electricity in animal brains has been known since 1874;...

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