Dr. Joseph E. Bogen, 78; Epilepsy Research Led to Breakthroughs on Right, Left Brain
Dr. Joseph E. Bogen, the USC and Caltech neurosurgeon whose early surgical interventions to control epilepsy laid the foundation for the development of modern ideas about the unique identities of right and left brains, has died.
Bogen, who was 78, died at Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena on April 22 after a long illness.
His work played a crucial role in the development of the split-brain experiments that won Caltech’s Roger Sperry the 1981 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, although his contributions have often been overlooked.
Most people now know that the brain has two hemispheres, the right and the left. Intriguingly, the left hemisphere controls the right side of the body and vice versa. Pop culture also identifies the right brain as intuitive, imaginative and nonverbal, while the left brain is considered logical, analytical, rational and verbal.
Those concepts grew directly out of the experiments of Sperry and, ultimately, the surgical manipulations of Bogen.
The two sides of the brain are connected by a structure called the corpus callosum, a bundle of more than 200 million nerve fibers that allows the two sides to communicate with each other.
But in people with severe cases of epilepsy, the corpus callosum can also serve as a conduit by which a seizure originating in one hemisphere can overwhelm the entire brain.
In the early 1960s, Bogen and Dr. Philip Vogel developed a surgery, called a commissurotomy, in which they severed the nerve fibers of the corpus callosum, thereby containing a seizure to one hemisphere. The procedure is only rarely used, however, and only as a last resort when all other options have failed.
The procedure controlled the worst epilepsy symptoms. The patients, surprisingly, seemed little affected by it. Bogen knew that Sperry had performed a similar operation in animals and suggested that Sperry study his patients as well.
Together, they were able to show that each side of the brain had independent consciousness and capabilities.
More recently, Bogen -- like many other scientists -- had been searching for the site in the brain where consciousness is located. He concluded that the location was the intralaminar nucleus of the thalamus gland and was preparing a book about his findings when he died.
Bogen was born in Cincinnati on July 13, 1926. He graduated from Monrovia High School and attended Caltech briefly before joining the Navy for wartime service in the Pacific. He received his undergraduate degree in economics from Whittier College and his medical degree from USC.
He was a clinical professor of neurological surgery at USC, a visiting professor in biology at Caltech and an adjunct professor of psychology at UCLA.
He is survived by his wife, the former Glenda A. Miksch; daughters Merial Stern of Burbank and Dr. Mira Sanchez of Davis, Calif.; and three grandsons. The couple’s first child, Glen David, died in infancy.
Donations in his name may be made to the Descanso Bonsai Society or the Joseph E. Bogen scholarship fund at Caltech.
