On the history of depth microelectrode recordings during functional stereotaxy

The first recordings of subcortical potentials of man fall into the pre-stereotactic era of movement disorder surgery. In the early 1940s, Meyers inserted manually an electrode through a craniotomy into the striatum of Parkinsonian patients under direct inspection, but found no correlation between his electrocaudatograms on the one hand and the clinically estimated degree of Parkinsonian symptoms on the other. However, Meyers' demonstration of the potential benefits of basal ganglia surgery together with the high mortality rates of these „open“ procedures led Spiegel to introduce the less invasive stereotactic m…