Rugby union player Jone Tawake also had a finger removed. National Football League safety Ronnie Lott had the tip of his little finger removed after it was damaged in the 1985 NFL season. Criminal penalty
According to Quran 5:38, the punishment for stealing is the amputation of the hand. Under Sharia law, after repeated offense, the foot may also be cut off. This is still in practice today in countries like Brunei, the United Arab Emirates, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and 11 states of Northern Nigeria. The United States considers amputation to be more severe than other punishments but less than death penalty, expressed in the double jeopardy clause: "nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb...". Thomas Jefferson proposed a bill penalizing various crimes with amputation, such as "if a man, by castration, if a woman, by cutting thro the cartilage of her nose a hole of one half inch diameter at the least" and "cutting out or disabling the tongue, slitting or cutting off a nose, lip or ear, branding, or otherwise, shall be maimed or disfigured in like sort: or if that cannot be for want of the same part, then as nearly as may be in some other part of at least equal value and estimation in the opinion of a jury". That bill is not a current law, so it either did not gain enough approval to become law, or it has since been repealed.
For patients with medial TLE whose seizures remain uncontrolled after trials of several types of anticonvulsants (that is, the epilepsy is intractable), surgical excision of the affected temporal lobe may be considered. Surgical interventions
Epilepsy surgery has been performed since the 1860s and doctors have observed that it is highly effective in producing freedom from seizures. However, it was not until 2001 that a scientifically sound study was carried out to examine the effectiveness of temporal lobectomy.Temporal lobe surgery can be complicated by decreased cognitive function. However, after temporal lobectomy, memory function is supported by the opposite temporal lobe; and recruitment of the frontal lobe. Cognitive rehabilitation may also help. Other treatments
Where surgery is not recommended, further management options include new (including experimental) anticonvulsants, and vagus nerve stimulation. The ketogenic diet is also recommended for children, and some adults. Other options include brain cortex responsive neural stimulators, deep brain stimulation, stereotactic radiosurgery, such as the gamma knife, and laser ablation. Effects on society
The first to record and catalog the abnormal symptoms and signs of TLE was Norman Geschwind. He found a constellation of symptoms that included hypergraphia, hyperreligiosity, collapse, and pedantism, now called Geschwind syndrome. Vilayanur S. Ramachandran explored the neural basis of the hyperreligiosity seen in TLE using the galvanic skin response (GSR), which correlates with emotional arousal, to determine whether the hyperreligiosity seen in TLE was due to an overall heightened emotional state or was specific to religious stimuli. Ramachandran presented two subjects with neutral, sexually arousing and religious words while measuring GSR.