Dr. Wilder Penfield - Academics

Wilder Penfield went back to the United States to receive his M.D. from Johns Hopkins Medical School in 1918, but returned to his mentor Dr. Charles Sherrington at Oxford in order to learn more about "the undiscovered country". Pursuing neurocytology, Dr. Penfield learned that the human brain could be safely exposed during surgery.

Building on this, Dr. Penfield thought it possible to perform surgery on patients who were awake, and use a sensitive electrical probe to actually observe the effect of brain stimulation on the body. He considered this to be a "neurologist in action" approach, unheard of before this time.