Braincutting for psychiatrists: the time is ripe

In the past two decades, neuroscientific investigations such as postmortem and neuroimaging studies have revealed a variety of regional brain disturbances in major mental illnesses. These emerging findings are difficult to appreciate fully without a sufficient grasp of the neuroanatomy of the regions identified in these studies. The authors have developed, for psychiatrists-in-training, a braincutting exercise designed to highlight the neuroanatomical features of specific regions; namely, regions with behavioral affiliations relevant to contemporary hypotheses about the brain bases of major mental disorders. The focus of the braincutting is markedly different from the traditional braincuttings that have been available to trainees in neurology, neurosurgery, and neuropathology. This article describes the authors' approach to braincutting and the behavioral neuroanatomy seminar of which it is a part.