The history of neuroscience Flashcards
What did Hippocrates believe?
The brain was responsible for the mind and behaviour. ‘The mind’ constituted as the soul.
What did Plato believe about a) the brain and b) the heart?
a) Reason and perception (sense and thought) originated from here
b) The passions originated from organs, predominantly the heart
What did Aristotle believe?
The heart was responsible for both thought and feeling
What did Galen believe?
The brain was responsible for both thought and feeling
Who wrote ‘De Humani Corporis Fabrica’ and what did it say about the ventricles of the brain?
Andreas Versalias, who believed the ventricles were crucial to sensation and movement.
What Descartes believe about the soul?
It was separate from the body and operated through the ventricles.
What did Descartes notice about the nerves?
They connected the brain to the body, thus he realised reflexes and consciousness were separate.
What did Galvani discover?
That electricity governs the nervous system.
What did Muller work on?
Electrical conduction in nerves.
Who invented phrenology and what is it?
Gall - the idea that specific functions were localised to particular brain areas.
Flourens was the founder of what?
Experimental science, he created lesions in the brains of animals to observe the effects.
What did Flourens conclude about phrenology?
There was no evidence for it.
Broca discovered Broca’s area. Where is it located and what happens when it becomes damaged?
In the frontal lobe - when damaged it induces speech loss.
Wernicke discovered Wernicke’s area. Where is it located and what does it do?
In the temporal lobe, it is involved in language comprehension.
Jackson studied damaged areas in the brain in order to deduce cerebral function. What did he think about localisation of function?
He favoured the idea.
Ferrier, Fritz and Hitzig all researched the same thing. What?
Electrical stimulation of brain areas and the effect on motor function.
What did Golgi and Cajal discover?
Neurons are separate entities and create a ‘web of fibres’ in the brain.
What did Helmholtz work on?
The speed of electrical transmission in the brain.
Who studied reflexes and nervous condition?
Sherrington.
What is Brenda Milner famous for?
Her work on short-term memory and learning in the hippocampus with the patient HM.
