History of the brain

History of the brain

The history of the brain details the development of thoughts, speculations, and ideas as to the function of the central nervous system, over the last five thousand years.

Early views on the function of the brain, regarded it to be a form of “cranial stuffing” of sorts. In Egypt, from the late Middle Kingdom onwards, in preparation for mummification, the brain was regularly removed, for it was the heart that was assumed to be the seat of intelligence. According to Herodotus, during the first step of mummification: ‘The most perfect practice is to extract as much of the brain as possible with an iron hook, and what the hook cannot reach is mixed with drugs.’ Over the next five thousand years, this view came to be reversed; the brain is now known to be seat of intelligence, although colloquial variations of the former remain as in “memorizing something by heart”.

Early views

The Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus, written in the 17th century BC, contains the earliest recorded reference to the brain. The word brain (adjacent), occurring eight times in this papyrus, describes the symptoms, diagnosis, and prognosis of two patients, wounded in the head, who had compound fractures of the skull.cite book
authorlink = Eric R. Kandel | last = Kandel | first = ER
coauthors = Schwartz JH, Jessell TM
title = Principles of Neural Science
edition = 4th ed.
publisher = McGraw-Hill | location = New York
year = 2000
id = ISBN 0-8385-7701-6
]

During the second half of the first millennium BC, the Ancient Greeks developed differing views on the function of the brain. It is said that it was the Pythagorean Alcmaeon of Croton (VI and V centuries BC) who first considered the brain to be the place where the mind was located. In the 4th cent. BC Hippocrates, believed the brain to be the seat of intelligence (based, among others before him, on Alcmaeon's work). During the 4th century BC Aristotle thought that, while the heart was the seat of intelligence, the brain was a cooling mechanism for the blood. He reasoned that humans are more rational than the beasts because, among other reasons, they have a larger brain to cool their hot-bloodedness.cite book
last = Bear | first = M.F.
coauthors = B.W. Connors, and M.A. Paradiso
title = Neuroscience: Exploring the Brain
location = Baltimore | publisher = Lippincott
year = 2001
id = ISBN 0-7817-3944-6
]

During the Hellenistic period, Herophilus of Calcedonia (c.335/330-280/250 BC) and Erasistratus of Ceos (c. 300-240 BC) made fundamental contributions not only to brain and nervous systems' anatomy and physiology, but to many other fields of the bio-sciences. Their works are now mostly lost, we know about their achievements due mostly to secondary sources. Some of their discoveries had to be re-discovered a millennia after their death.

During the Roman Empire, the Greek anatomist Galen dissected the brains of sheep, monkeys, dogs, swine, among other non-human mammals. He concluded that, as the cerebellum was denser than the brain, it must control the muscles, while as the cerebrum was soft, it must be where the senses were processed. Galen further theorized that the brain functioned by movement of animal spirits through the ventricles.

Middle Ages

In the 10th century, Najab ud-din Muhammad first described a number of neurological disorders in detail, including agitated depression, neurosis, priapism, impotence, psychosis and mania.Ibrahim B. Syed PhD, "Islamic Medicine: 1000 years ahead of its times", "Journal of the Islamic Medical Association", 2002 (2), p. 2-9 [7] .] Haly Abbas described the neuroanatomy, neurobiology and neurophysiology of the brain and first described a number of other neurological disorders, including sleeping sickness, memory loss, hypochondriasis, coma, hot and cold meningitis, vertigo epilepsy, love sickness, and hemiplegia.Amber Haque (2004), "Psychology from Islamic Perspective: Contributions of Early Muslim Scholars and Challenges to Contemporary Muslim Psychologists", "Journal of Religion and Health" 43 (4): 357-377 [363] .] Symptoms resembling schizophrenia were also reported in medieval Arabic medical literature. [Hanafy A. Youssef and Fatma A. Youssef (1996), "Evidence for the existence of schizophrenia in medieval Islamic society", "History of Psychiatry" 7 (25): 55-62.]

In the 11th century, Alhazen, a founder of experimental psychology and psychophysics,Omar Khaleefa (Summer 1999). "Who Is the Founder of Psychophysics and Experimental Psychology?", "American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences" 16 (2).] pioneered the psychology of visual perception in his "Book of Optics". He was the first scientist to argue that vision occurs in the brain, rather than the eyes, and pointed out that personal experience has an effect on what people see and how they see, and that vision and perception are subjective.Bradley Steffens (2006). "Ibn al-Haytham: First Scientist", Chapter 5. Morgan Reynolds Publishing. ISBN 1599350246.] Biruni, another pioneer in experimental psychology, was the first to describe the concept of reaction time. [Muhammad Iqbal, "The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam", "The Spirit of Muslim Culture" (cf. [http://www.allamaiqbal.com/works/prose/english/reconstruction] and [http://www.witness-pioneer.org/vil/Books/MI_RRTI/chapter_05.htm] )] Avicenna was a pioneer of neuropsychiatry, and in "The Canon of Medicine", he first described numerous neuropsychiatric conditions, including hallucination, insomnia, mania, nightmare, melancholia, dementia, epilepsy, paralysis, stroke, vertigo and tremor. [S Safavi-Abbasi, LBC Brasiliense, RK Workman (2007), "The fate of medical knowledge and the neurosciences during the time of Genghis Khan and the Mongolian Empire", "Neurosurgical Focus" 23 (1), E13, p. 3.]

In al-Andalus, Abulcasis, the father of modern surgery, developed material and technical designs which are still used in neurosurgery. Avenzoar described meningitis, intracranial thrombophlebitis, mediastinal tumours and made contributions to modern neuropharmacology. Averroes suggested the existence of Parkinson's disease and attributed photoreceptor properties to the retina. Maimonides wrote about neuropsychiatric disorders and described rabies and belladonna intoxication. [Martin-Araguz, A.; Bustamante-Martinez, C.; Fernandez-Armayor, Ajo V.; Moreno-Martinez, J. M. (2002). "Neuroscience in al-Andalus and its influence on medieval scholastic medicine", "Revista de neurología" 34 (9), p. 877-892.] Elsewhere in medieval Europe, Vesalius (1514-1564) and René Descartes (1596-1650) also made several contributions to neuroscience.

Modern period

Studies of the brain became more sophisticated after the invention of the microscope and the development of a staining procedure by Camillo Golgi during the late 1890s that used a silver chromate salt to reveal the intricate structures of single neurons. His technique was used by Santiago Ramón y Cajal and led to the formation of the neuron doctrine, the hypothesis that the functional unit of the brain is the neuron. Golgi and Ramón y Cajal shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1906 for their extensive observations, descriptions and categorizations of neurons throughout the brain. The hypotheses of the neuron doctrine were supported by experiments following Galvani's pioneering work in the electrical excitability of muscles and neurons. In the late 19th century, DuBois-Reymond, Müller, and von Helmholtz showed neurons were electrically excitable and that their activity predictably affected the electrical state of adjacent neurons.

In parallel with this research, work with brain-damaged patients by Paul Broca suggested that certain regions of the brain were responsible for certain functions. This hypothesis was supported by observations of epileptic patients conducted by John Hughlings Jackson, who correctly deduced the organization of motor cortex by watching the progression of seizures through the body. Wernicke further developed the theory of the specialization of specific brain structures in language comprehension and production. Modern research still uses the Brodmann cytoarchitectonic (referring to study of cell structure) anatomical definitions from this era in continuing to show that distinct areas of the cortex are activated in the execution of specific tasks. [Principles of Neural Science, 4th ed. Eric R. Kandel, James H. Schwartz, Thomas M. Jessel, eds. McGraw-Hill:New York, NY. 2000.]

References

Further reading

* Rousseau, George S. (2004). "Nervous Acts: Essays on Literature, Culture and Sensibility." Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 1-4039-3454-1 (Paperback) ISBN 1403934533


Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Поможем написать реферат

Look at other dictionaries:

  • History of the Time Lords — The Time Lords are fictional characters, a race of humanoids originating on the planet Gallifrey, seen in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who . Time Lords are so called because they are able to travel in and manipulate time… …   Wikipedia

  • History of the National Hockey League (1992–present) — The Columbus Blue Jackets face the St. Louis Blues in 2008. The National Hockey League (NHL) has endured a tumultuous period of history in recent years. It has grown from 22 teams in 1992 to 30 today as the league expanded across the United… …   Wikipedia

  • History of the Panama Canal — The history of the Panama Canal goes back almost to the earliest explorers of the Americas. The narrow land bridge between North and South America offers a unique opportunity to create a water passage between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. This …   Wikipedia

  • History of the Kansas City Royals — The following is a detailed history of the Kansas City Royals, a Major League Baseball team that began play in 1969 in Kansas City, Missouri. The team is currently in the American League Central Division. The franchise has won six division titles …   Wikipedia

  • History of the National Hockey League (1942–1967) — The Original Six era of the National Hockey League (NHL) began in 1942 with the demise of the Brooklyn Americans, reducing the NHL to six teams. The NHL, comprised of the Boston Bruins, Chicago Black Hawks, Detroit Red Wings, Montreal Canadiens,… …   Wikipedia

  • History of the Americas — The history of the Americas is the collective history of North and South America, including Central America and the Caribbean. It begins with people migrating to these areas from Asia and possibly Oceania during the height of an Ice Age. These… …   Wikipedia

  • History of the Greek alphabet — The History of the Greek alphabet starts with the adoption of Phoenician letter forms and continues to the present day. This article concentrates on the early period, before the codification of the now standard Greek alphabet. The Phoenician… …   Wikipedia

  • History of the Earth — For the history of modern humans, see History of the world. Geological time put in a diagram called a geological clock, showing the relative lengths of the eons of the Earth s history The history of the Earth describes the most important events… …   Wikipedia

  • The Brain of Morbius — ] [cite web url= http://www.shannonsullivan.com/drwho/serials/4k.html title= The Brain of Morbius publisher = A Brief History of Time Travel last = Sullivan first = Shannon date = 2007 08 07 accessdate = 2008 08 30] The original script was… …   Wikipedia

  • History of the Daleks — Kaled redirects here. For the musician, see DJ Khaled. The Daleks (  /ˈdɑː …   Wikipedia

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”