Turan M Itil

Neuropsychopharmacology (2014) 39, 31333134

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In Memoriam

Turan M Itil

Neuropsychopharmacology (2014) 39, 31333134; doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/npp.2014.253

Web End =10.1038/npp.2014.253

In 1929 Hans Berger, a German sanitarium psychiatrist, recorded the brains continuing electrical rhythms from the intact scalp of his daughter and a laboratory assistant. He described changes in response to eye-opening, arithmetic tests, sleep, and such drugs as morphine, cocaine and chloroform. Soon thereafter, the treatments of insulin coma, induced seizures, and lobotomy were introduced for the severe psychiatric ill. Each altered the EEG rhythms galvanizing psychiatrists who studied the effects on the EEG to understand how these treatments worked.

When chlorpromazine and imipramine were introduced to the clinic, Turan Itil was among the first to study their effects on the EEG. At the CINP meeting in Rome in 1958, our independent reports were so similar that each could have used the others slides and data.

In 1964 he came to St Louis to establish the Neurophysiology Laboratory at the Missouri Institute of Psychiatry using newly developed...