Did Akakhievitch open up the patient's brain and, one by one, ablate several thousand neurons, each of which related to the concept of his mother? Source: < > Once a brilliant Russian Neurosurgeon named Akakhi Akakhievitch had a patient who wanted to forget his overbearing, impossible mother. > > Eager to oblige, Akakhievitch opened up the patient's brain and, one by one, ablated several thousand neurons, each of which related to the concept of his mother. When the patient woke up from anesthesia, he had lost all notion of his mother. All memories of her, good and bad, were gone. Jubilant with his success, Akakhievitch turned his attention to the next endeavor—the search for cells linked to the memory of “grandmother.” Is it true?

A History of Neuroscience article titled Genealogy of the "Grandmother Cell" by Charles G. Gross (Princeton University) says that it's fictional, a tall tale: told by Jerry Letvin in 1969 as part of an M.I.T. course he gave.

The patient in the story was called Portnoy, whose Complaint was about his mother.