History
W. Grey Walter, pioneer in the electroencephalogram, robotics, cybernetics, artificial intelligence

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Abstract

With the announcement by William Lennox at the 1935 London International Neurology Congress of the use of electroencephalography in the study of epilepsy, it became evident that a new and powerful technique for the investigation of seizures had been discovered. William Grey Walter, a young researcher finishing his post-graduate studies at Cambridge, was selected to construct and study the EEG in clinical neurology at the Maudsley Hospital, London. His hugely productive pioneering career in the use of EEG would eventually lead to groundbreaking work in other fields —the emerging sciences of robotics, cybernetics, and early work in artificial intelligence. In this historical note his pioneering work in the fields of clinical neurophysiology is documented, both in the areas of epileptology and tumour detection. His landmark contributions to clinical neurophysiology are worthy of documentation.

Introduction

There seemed little doubt that the announcement by Dr William Lennox of the role of electroencephalography in epileptology, took most of the audience of experts in epilepsy attending the first day of the Second International Neurology Congress in London, 1935, by surprise.1 Considerable work on recording the electrical activity of the brain had been undertaken in various centres, but its use in the study of epilepsy was not widely known.

Much radical development still had to be done to allow routine use of even rudimentary electroencephalograms (EEGs) for clinical gain — for it was still to be determined just how productive the introduction of this new investigation method would really be. Work began in many countries to further develop and explore the use of this technique.

It so happened, thanks to the foresight of Frederic Golla at the Maudsley Hospital, London, that a young research worker there was already working on this very project. And in later years that young post-graduate neuroscientist, William Grey Walter, (Fig. 1) was destined to play a pivotal role in the technological development and clinical introduction of the EEG.

An unconventional person from his early days, he was nevertheless a brilliant scientist, one of the ground-breaking pioneers in both the development and clinical use of the EEG. However, in addition, this innovative genius would lay the basis for the pioneering technology in robotics and cybernetics and early work in artificial intelligence, an area for which he and his famous “tortoises” are now justly famous.2 However, it was his early work in the EEG which first brought him neuroscientific recognition, both in the study of epilepsy and also in the location of cerebral tumours.

Section snippets

Dr Lennox at the International Neurology Congress, 1935

The first day of the Second International Neurology Congress, held in London, July 1935, was taken up with the discussion of the etiology and management of epilepsy. This kindled an enormous amount of interest, forcing the addition of another two extra sessions to include all those speakers desirous of presenting papers, and the whole field of concepts seemed to be canvassed. But according to reports, there was no doubt that the presentation by Dr William Lennox, from Boston, aroused a great

William Grey Walter

Although born in the US (Kansas City, Missouri) in 1910, his family moved to London in 1917, and all his education, vocational training and professional life occurred in England. His secondary education at Westminster School was attended with academic success, where his Distinction in Divinity (Greek Testament) must have occasioned some wry amusement in his family: his father, a journalist of some note, was very much of the political left, indeed he had reported the International Anarchists

Pre-war development of EEG

The early stages of Grey Walter’s work in developing the EEG took place in the laboratories at the Maudsley Hospital, London. Of course, the initial equipment had to be assembled by him on his own; but apparently he was a genius at tackling this type of problem, with an expertise that dated back to childhood days, in tinkering with the “crystal sets” of the old wireless era. The main task was the construction, development, and the testing of the technology involved; and of course, its

Brain tumour localisation

Less than a year after the London Congress, Grey Walter (1936)11 published his initial data indicating that it was possible to locate active cerebral tumours by observing the presence and the distribution of the slow activity in the records of such patients. In doing so he is credited with naming the slow activity “delta waves.”

Walter expanded this work in his paper to the Royal Society of Medicine in January 1937, but he emphasized that much work still remained to be done and

…the method was

EEG in the study of epilepsy

The Gibbs and their collaborators in Boston, had rapidly advanced their work in epilepsy; their original paper which had been previewed by Lennox in his speech to the 1935 London Congress, was published later that year.17

And Lennox himself published his important Congress paper in Brain the following year.18 These two papers ushered in a new era of epileptology.

More work identified the signature EEG activity of “petit mal”:

…3 per second wave and spike pattern is pathognomonic of Petit Mal19

And

EEG and psychiatry

It comes as a matter of some surprise for us today, to see the involvement of psychiatry in the early development of the EEG. It must be remembered that the division between neurology and psychiatry, at that time, was not as sharp as it is now. But in addition, the scope of the problems of psychiatry seemed to have no productive avenue of approach for their elucidation or solution; so there was a great deal of attention given to the search for an electrical method of recording the brain’s

Burden Neurology Institute, Bristol

In 1939, Golla and his team, including Grey Walter, moved to the newly opened Burden Institute, founded and funded by a Christian charitable foundation mainly concerned with eugenics and the feeble-minded.

Despite its religious and reformist agenda the charity granted Golla and Walter the financial and intellectual freedom to pursue their research.32

Although this move away from the busy clinical milieu of London did have some disadvantages, the move enabled Grey Walter to continue the

Further developments

Electroconvulsive therapy. In 1940, working with Golla and Fleming, Grey Walter was involved in the technological aspects of the introduction of electro-convulsive therapy into British psychiatric practice.33 This practice has always been contentious, indeed not accepted in some areas. But as already indicated, this was in accord with the general acceptance of physical agents in the management of psychiatric patients which had gained credence at that time, and Walter was a supporter of this

Robotics, cybernetics, artificial intelligence

These days the name of W. Grey Walter is quite famous, but not for his pivotal contributions to the development of electroencephalography. Internet information on his achievements is quite voluminous, but virtually all of it concerns his place in the evolution of cybernetics, robotics, and the early days of artificial intelligence. In fact he holds an exalted place in the history of these areas of scientific discovery.

Early robots — the famous tortoises: The concept of an autonomous,

Grey Walter — the man

His activities were by no means confined to the scientific laboratory or the EEG recording room. He had a central role to the establishment of the EEG as an accepted means of neurological investigation and also to the training of technologists in this discipline.42

Both Grey Walter’s personality, his abrupt shift from university laboratory to hospital milieu, and his fundamental break with university-based neurophysiology at Cambridge and Oxford, automatically put him at odds with traditional

Fine

Grey Walter often said that he had been lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time, and this was certainly the case at the time of Lennox’ 1935 announcement concerning the role of the EEG in epileptology. And of course he had to thank the foresight of Professor Golla for his timely recruitment to the Maudsley, and for his acquaintance with Professor Berger in Jena, the original discoverer of the “elektrekephalogramm.” But it was not his strategic positioning alone that boosted his

Acknowledgements

The work of W. Grey Walter in the technological development and clinical use of the EEG was very much the stuff of everyday life for the present author during the period of my duties in the EEG Department, The National Hospital, Queen Square; and I was fortunate enough to meet him on several occasions at Society meetings in London. In addition his friend, Dr. Bill Cobb, my chief at the time, was a mine of information regarding the many aspects of this famous man.

In gathering the data for this

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