Brenda Milner

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Brenda Milner bigraphy, stories - Canada-based British neuroscientist and neuropsychologist

Brenda Milner : biography

15 July 1918 –

Brenda Milner, (born 15 July 1918) is a British neuropsychologist who has contributed extensively to the research literature on various topics in the field of clinical neuropsychology.Karen Birchard, , Chronicle of Higher Education, Nov. 6, 2011 Milner is a professor in the Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery at McGill University and a professor of Psychology at the Montreal Neurological Institute.. (2011). Government of Canada. She currently holds more than 20 honorary degrees and has continued to work into her nineties. Her current work explores the interaction between the brain’s left and right hemispheres. Milner has been called the founder of Neuropsychology, and has proven to be an essential key in its development.

Awards/Honours

Milner has received numerous awards for her contributions to neuroscience and psychology including memberships in the Royal Society of London, the Royal Society of Canada and the National Academy of Sciences.

Early on, Milner was awarded a Sarah Smithson Research Studentship by Newnham College, Cambridge after her graduation, which allowed her to attended Newnham. In 1984 Milner was made an Officer of the Order of Canada and was promoted to Companion in 2004. She was also awarded the National Academy of Sciences Award in the Neurosciences in 2004 for her seminal investigations of the role of the temporal lobes and other brain regions in learning, memory, and language. (2012). In 1985, she was made an Officer of the National Order of Quebec and was promoted to Grand Officer in 2009. She was awarded the Balzan Prize for her contributions to Cognitive Neurosciences in a ceremony held in the Swiss Parliament in December 2009.

Professional Career

Milner published an article in the McGill University Psychological Bulletin in 1954 entitled “Intellectual Function of the Temporal Lobes”; within this publication she brought to light that temporal lobe damage can cause emotional and intellectual changes in humans and lower primates.“Intellectual Function of the Temporal Lobes.” The Psychological Bulletin. Vol. 51. No. 1, 1954 In this work, Milner reviewed animal studies of neural function and compared it to human neuroscience work. Her publication discouraged many neurosurgeons from completing surgeries on human beings that could negatively impact their lives. “Milner’s early work on the temporal lobes was influenced by the results of ablation work with lower primates, and particularly by Mishkin and Pribram’s discovery of the role of the inferotemporal neocortex in visual discrimination learning.”

Milner was a pioneer in the field of neuropsychology and in the study of memory and other cognitive functions in humankind. She studied the effects of damage to the medial temporal lobe on memory and systematically described the deficits in the most famous patient in cognitive neuroscience, Henry Molaison, formerly known as patient H.M. Though he was not able to remember new events he was able to learn new motor skills. Milner was invited to Hartford to study H.M., “who had undergone a bilateral temporal lobectomy that included removal of major portions of the hippocampus.”Turner, M. S. (2010). . The DANA Foundation.

In the early stages of her work with H.M., Milner wanted to completely understand his memory impairments. Dr. Milner showed that the medial temporal lobe amnestic syndrome is characterized by an inability to acquire new memories and an inability to recall established memories from a few years immediately before damage, while memories from the more remote past and other cognitive abilities, including language, perception and reasoning were intact. For example, Milner spent three days with H.M. as he learned a new perceptual-motor task in order to determine what type of learning and memory were intact in him. This task involved reproducing a drawing of a star by looking at it in a mirror. His performance improved over those three days. However, he retained absolutely no memory of any events that took place during those three days. This led Milner to speculate that there are different types of learning and memory, each dependent on a separate system of the brain .Xia, C. (2006). Interview with Dr. Brenda Milner. McGill Journal of Medicine, 9(2), 165–172. She was able to demonstrate two different memory systems- episodic memory and procedural memory.