A lobotomy, or leucotomy, was a form of psychosurgery, a neurosurgical treatment of a mental disorder that involves severing connections in the brain's prefrontal cortex. Most of the connections to and from the prefrontal cortex, the anterior part of the frontal lobes of the brain, are severed.

Do lobotomies still get performed?

Today lobotomy is rarely performed; however, shock therapy and psychosurgery (the surgical removal of specific regions of the brain) occasionally are used to treat patients whose symptoms have resisted all other treatments.

What do lobotomies actually do?

Lobotomy was a welcome treatment based on the premise that symptoms of mental illness were caused by faulty connections between the frontal lobes and another part of the brain -- the thalamus. The idea was that severing those connections and regrowing them could treat symptoms of the mental illness.