NP2 History of neuropsychology Flashcards
'’All science is either physics or stamp collecting.’’ What does it mean? How is it related to neuropsychology?
Physics: mechanistic explanation
Stamp collecting: establishing phenomena
Clinical neuropsychology is both
How do we sort the phenomena (stamps)?
Clear categories - more trivial: which country? which colour?
Fuzzy (complex) categories - more ambigous decisions: animals vs people
Clinical neuropsychology includes both types
What are the four periods that are important for the history of neuropsychology?
- Antiquity
- Renaissace
- 19th century
- 20th century
Antiquity
What are the years that antiquity happened and what is the main idea of this period?
400BCE - 300 CE
Philosophy meets empiricism
Philosophy - exercise of thinking and building theories
Empiricism - observations and experimenting
Antiquity
Who were the four important people in Antiquity?
- Aristotle
- Hippocrates
- Herophilus
- Galen
Antiquity
What were Aristotle’s ideas? What years?
384 - 322 BCE
- Highly influential thinker
- Carefully observed and then built theories on these observations
↪ body is sacred, no dissacting (only animals, e.g. all have a heart > must be important)
- Heart is the seat of intelligence (heart produces heat)
- Brain cools the body
- Physiognomy - the interpretation of the face
↪ Early recognition of individual differences in personality, i.e. character
Antiquity
What were Hippocrates’ ideas? What years?
460 - 370 BCE
- Father of modern medicine
- Brain is for mental functions
- All abnormal behaviours and emotions stem from the working of the brain
- Pioneered lesion observations
Antiquity
What were Herophilus’s accomplishments? What years?
335 - 280 BCE
- Pioneered observation over philosophising - first dissection of the body
- Described the nervous system through dissections - basic anatomy established
Antiquity
What were Claudius Galen’s accomplishments? What years?
129-216 CE
- Pioneered dissection and comparative anatomy
- Mapped ventricular system (cavities) and cranial nerves (from the brain to the body)
- Distinguised sensory and motor nerves
How did neuropsychology look before the Renaissance?
- Gross anatomy established
- Some idea that the brain is important for mental function
- No specific theory of brain-behaviour relationships
Why was there so little progress over hundreds of years?
- Notion that the soul had no physical basis
↪ didn’t look at brain-behaviour relationship because this thought was too deeply rooted - Experimentation on humans is forbidden
- Scientific methos is not fully established
Renaissance
What are the years that Reinassance happened and what are the main accomplishments of this period?
1500-1900
- The scientific method takes hold
- The soul gets localised
Renaissance
Who were the three important people in Renaissance?
- Vesalius
- René Descartes
- Franz Joseph Gall
Renaissance
What were Vesalius’s accomplishments? What years?
1515-1564
- Founder of human anatomy
- created detailed descriptions and drawings of the anatomy of the brain
Renaissance
What were René Descartes’ accomplishments and ideas? What years?
1596-1650
- Shaped mind-body dualism (separation)
↪ meditations: ‘I think, therefore I am’ (the thought is the only thing we can be certain of, anything else could be an illusion)
- Viewed the body as a machine and the soul as located in pineal gland (meta-physical)
- Influenced empirical physiology
↪ experiments on animals studying physical processes
Renaissance
What were Franz Josef Gall’s accomplishments? What years?
1758-1828
- Shaped the idea of localisation (one area = one function)
↪ The mind should be sought on the edge of the brain, i.e. cortex
- Developed phrenology
↪ pseudoscience
↪ the brain is a muscle = train and becomes bigger > results in lumps on the skull
What did neuropsychology look like before the 19th century
- More knowledge about the structure of the brain
- Relationship between brain and behaviour is unclear
↪ No conceptual framework that ties both together - Views were heavily influenced by religious and political ideas
19th century
What is the main accomplishment of the 19th century? What problem lead to further development of neuropsychology?
1800-WWI
- The dawn of brain mapping and related behaviours
- Language problems in France and Germany
19th century
Who were the five important people in the 19th century?
- Jean-Martin Charcot
- Paul Broca
- Carl Wernicke
- John Hughlings Jackson
- Francis Galton
19th century
What are the accomplishments of Jean-Martin Charcot? What years?
1825-1893
- First Professor of Neurology
- First described and categorised many neurological disorders (e.g. multiple sclerosis)
- Developed systematic examination (set of questions to see what the patients have in common)
- First associated specific lesions with clinical symptoms
19th century
What are the accomplishments of Paul Broca? What years?
1824-1880
- Indentified a critical area of language production
- Build on ideas of Bouillaud who thought that language are is at the front of the brain
↪ examined through the clinico-anatomical method
- Studied Mr Leborgne - Patient Tan
- Established methods of behavioural observation and post-mortem anatomy
↪ post-mortem: linked the lesion in the left-hemisphere with behaviour observed during the life (difficulty producing language)
↪ Helped to establish the assymetry of the two halves of the brain
19th century
What are the accomplishments of Carl Wernicke? What years?
1848-1905
- Identified a critical area of language comprehension (double dissociation)
- Established the idea of disconnection aphasia
↪ the disconnection could produce its own set of symptoms
19th century
What are the accomplishments of John Hughling Jackson? What years?
1835-1911
- Established neurology in the UK
- Suggested a hierarchical organization of the brain
- Founded the first journal dedicated for neurology (Brain)
- Distinguised between different types of epilepsy
↪ discovered that some areas take over other damaged areas
↪ Stated that we shouldn’t confuse the location of a lesion that resulted in a specific loss of function with the location of a function
19th century
What are the accomplishments of Francis Galton? What years? What was the problem with him?
1822-1911
- Brought mathematical concepts to psychology
- problematic figure - racist > wanted to prove that some people are superior
↪ to do that he had to develop assessment of intelligence
- Pioneered psychometric assessment (e.g. intelligence test)
20th century
What characterisis the 20th century regarding neuropsychology?
1900-1990
- Guns revolutionise neuropsychology
- Strict localization fades away
20th century
How did guns & rifles revolutionise neuropsychology?
- Treatment of headshot wounds in WWI and WWII advances neuropsychology
- Realisation that the brain functions as an integrated whole (holism)
↪ brain is closely related > brain injury causes gobal problems, not just on one specific function
20th century
What developments has research in the USA with spli-brain patients brought?
- Roger Sperry
↪ Research with split-brain patients
↪ Hemisphere specialisation (right side better at some functions than left) - Methods to study localization of the brain on individuals who have not suffered any brain injury
- Psychologists started working with patients with brain disorders from a neuropsychological perspective
- Arthur Benton development new neuropsychological tests
20th century
Who were the three important people in the 20th century?
- Aleksandr Luria
- Jerry Fodor
- Brenda Milner
20th century
What were the accomplishemts and ideas of Aleksandr Luria? What years?
1902-1977
- Studied soldiers with brain injuries
- Pioneered systems view of brain function
- Functional subsystems - result from interaction between nature and nurture
- Whole brain adaptive and flexibe
- Developed a comprehensive assessment battery
- Developed rehabilitation protocols for brain injury
↪ what to work on to improve
20th century
What are Luria’s Functional Units?
- Arousal and Tone
- Processing Information
- Planning and Executing
Luria’s Functional Units
What brain parts execute Arousal and Tone and what is the function?
- Brain stem and medulla
- Regulates wakefulness, alertness, state of consciousness
Luria’s Functional Units
What brain parts execute Processing Information and what is the function?
- Posterior parts of the brain
- Perception and storing and retrieving information
Luria’s Functional Units
What brain part executes Planning and Executing and what is the function?
- Frontal lobe
- Planning, decision-making, problem-solving, and executing complex behaviour
Luria’s functional units
In what ways was Luria close to nowadays’ knowledge of the brain?
- Some of the locations are correct > planning and executing in prefrontal cortex
- However, now we don’t think that the whole back of the brain is responsible for processing of information
Luria’s Functional Units
What is Luria’s hierarchical organization? What are the levels and how do they compare to nowadays’ knowledge?
- Hierarchical processing within each functional unit
1. Primary: input (sensory info comes in - sensory cortex)
2. Secondary: processing
3. Tertiary: integration with other areas (association areas)
What is in italics applies to nowadays’ knowledge
20th century
What are the accomplishments of Jerry Fodor? What years?
1935-2017
- Introduced the concept of modularity: brain processes that operate independently
↪ modules
- Turned away from holism and connectionism
↪ Analysing the effects of damage on cognitive functions by breaking down normal processes to sub-processes
Jerry Fodor’s modules
What characteristics does a module have to comply with?
- can only process certain information
- is innate
- is encapsulated from the workings of other processes
- is computationally autonomous and has a its own neural architecture
↪ no sharing of memory processes, attention capacity, etc., with other modules
20th century
When was Brenda Milner born and what are her accomplishments?
- Born in 1918
- Uncovered the brain basis of memory through her work with Henry Molaison (patient H.M.)
↪ Developed the mirror-tracing task - trace star shape reflected in the mirror > H.M. could do it after some days but didn’t remember how
↪ episodic memory not working but procedural does - Established dissociations between different aspects of memory
Why is it difficult to study brain-behaviour relationship?
- Diaschisis
- Compensation
- Individual differences
Lessons learned
Diaschisis
- Greek for shocked through
- Brain injury or disease may have more widespread effects:
↪ Differences in organisation may influence information processingh systems
↪ Connections may affect transfer between areas (axonal lesions)
↪ Differences in synchronisation may affect communication
slide 31
Lessons learned
Compensation
- Damaged areas’ function can be replaced by other area to compensate for the damage
- Test performance doesn’t necessarily reflect the disrupted processing of a damaged mechanism
- Tasks can be performed using different strategies
- Participants can learn to adapt, e.g. use different substrates to perform the same task
Lessons learned
Individual differences
- Variation in typical brain anatomy and physiology
↪ Might result in faulty assumptions if generalised from an ‘average’ brain - Research done by Mignight Scan Club
- Example: Broca’s area cannot be identified on the basis of morphology in 20% of the typical population, despite typical language formation
What are the limitations of the past?
Confronting a difficult past, doing better in the future
- Ethical practices
- Socio-cultural Context
- Interdisciplinarity
Limitations
What were the ethical practices in the past?
- Experimentation without consent
- Using experimental medical procedures
- Racial and class judgment
- Misuse of assessments and disregarding individual differences (e.g. access to education)
How can the ethical practices be improved in the future/present?
- Informed consent and indpendent ethical review
- Monitored guidelines for introducting new treatments
↪ Inform participants of involved risks - More inclusive research, including Gobal Majority (now mostly WEIRD participants)
- Incorporating theories from other disciplines and cultures
