Knowra History of neuroscience History of neuroscience The history of neuroscience traces how people have investigated the nervous system, from ancient accounts of brain and behavior to modern experimental and clinical science.
Edwin Smith Papyrus : An ancient Egyptian medical text describing injuries, symptoms, examinations, and treatments, including head trauma. Its head-injury cases preserve early observations linking damage to the head with changes in function.
Galvani's frog experiments : Experiments in which Luigi Galvani observed muscle contractions caused by electrical stimulation of frog nerves. They helped establish bioelectricity as a subject of physiological investigation.
Hippocrates : An ancient Greek physician traditionally associated with writings that treated the brain as central to sensation and thought. His position challenged accounts that gave the heart primacy in mental life.
Cardiocentrism : The doctrine that the heart, rather than the brain, is the central organ of thought and sensation. It represents the ancient rival to brain-centered explanations of mental life.
Neurology : The medical specialty concerned with disorders of the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nervous system. Lesion studies and physiological discoveries helped establish its clinical foundations.
Phrenology : A discredited theory that mental faculties could be inferred from the shape of the skull. Its errors nevertheless helped popularize the idea that different brain regions have distinct functions.
Golgi stain : A silver-based histological technique that reveals a small fraction of neurons in their entirety. It exposed individual nerve cells for detailed study, despite Golgi's disagreement with neuron theory.
Galen : A Greek physician of the Roman Empire whose anatomical and medical writings shaped European and Islamic medicine for centuries. His theories of nerves and brain function dominated discussion long after his animal dissections.
Ventricular theory : The historical theory that mental faculties reside in the brain's fluid-filled ventricles. It differs from later accounts that locate functions in brain tissue itself.
Neuropsychology : The study of relationships between brain function and cognition or behavior, especially through brain injury and disease. Its methods grew from historical efforts to infer brain function from patients' symptoms.
Show all 28