Jean Talairach

Jean Talairach ( born January 15, 1911 in Perpignan, † March 15, 2007 in Paris) was a French neurosurgeon and neuroscientist.

Life

For Talairach, the son of a pianist, a musical career seems at first to emerge. His mother lets him learn to play the cello at a professional level. Then he developed his passion for geometry and architecture and is particularly interested in the lecture halls of medieval medical school in Montpellier. This in turn awakens his interest in medicine, particularly psychiatry. 1938 he went to Paris to study medicine.

At the Hôpital Sainte -Anne, one of the most prestigious and oldest hospitals of France, which was founded in the 13th century, he received his doctorate with a thesis on female psychosis. During the German occupation he joined the Resistance. For the Allies, he makes a detailed plan of the underground tunnels of Paris. In 1944 it was included in the Légion d' Honneur.

Decisive for his career is an encounter with Marcel David, the head of which was founded in 1939 neurosurgical department of the Hôpital Sainte -Anne. At the Institute, he imagines the basics of procedures that should be known later under the name of Stereotaxis. These make it possible to locate with great precision functional areas of the brain. At a time where imaging techniques such as magnetic resonance imaging are not yet available and provide radiographs only an inaccurate representation of the brain, it creates a named after him precise mapping of the human brain.

His work is the basis for brain anatomy atlases, even today, in 2007, are still relevant. The developed by him and his teammates Pierre Tournoux, Gabor Szikla and Jean Bancaud data provide the basis for the imaging software that enables it in neurosurgical operations to work in full knowledge of the position of the treatment target and the operation tool. This neurosurgical treatment of brain tumors, epilepsy or movement of certain anomalies, for example, allows.

For fixation of the head during treatment he invented in 1947 was named after him Talairach frame ( cadre de Talairach ), but he does not log on for a patent.

His work contributes to a large extent to the present reputation of the Hôpital Sainte -Anne. His death coincided with the publication of his last work, which deals with the history of the Department of Neurosurgery at the Hôpital Sainte -Anne. He dies in the same room at the Hôpital Sainte -Anne, which had once been his study.

Writings

• Bertrand Devaux, Jean Talairach: Souvenirs of études stéréotaxiques you cerveau humain Une vie, une équipe une méthodologie: L' Ecole de Sainte -Anne, Éditions John Libbey EUR text, Paris 2007, ISBN 978-2-7420-0653-3
• Jean Talairach, Pierre Tournoux: Co -Planar stereotaxic Atlas of the Human Brain. Thieme, Stuttgart 1988, ISBN 3-13-711701-1.