Stephen T. Casper of Clarkson U. (NY) has started a new blog on the history of neurology and neuroscience called Neuro Times. Posts include critiques of recent journal articles on the history of neuroscience, reviews of recent books, announcement of relevant resources, an excursus on the history of Alzheimer’s disease, and and a profile of Nobel Prize-winning neurologist E. D. Adrian.
Thanks to Mind Hacks for the tip!
Share on Facebook
The most recent issue of Isis contains a fascinating review by David Sepkoski of the book On Deep History and the Brain by Daniel Lord Smail (U. California Press, 2007). In essence, the book argues that historians should look past history to evolutionary pre-history (especially of the brain) in order to understand otherwise mysterious historical movements. To quote form the review:
Share on FacebookDrawing on recent cognitive psychology, Smail argues that neurochemical states in the brain—the production of hormones in response to stimulus or stress, for instance—can explain historical phenomena otherwise obscure or unintelligible to traditional historical methodology. The centerpiece of this argument is an examination of “teletropic” and “autotropic” behaviors in humans—respectively, behaviors in which humans either regulate the stimulus-response patterns in others (as a form of dominance or control) or produce them in themselves (as a way of seeking pleasure or relief from stress). This is indeed a provocative—even revolutionary—argument, and perhaps Smail is giving us a glimpse of a fundamentally new way of joining history, biology, and psychology. Continue reading
In a recent issue of History of Human Relations, 21(4), Simon Cohn (pictured left) explored the ways in which subjective experiences have been captured objectively through the use of brain-imaging techniques. In his examination, he discovered a potential problem.
Although hidden from final scientific accounts, at the centre of this [imaging] process is the need for the researchers to forge brief but intimate and personal relationships with the volunteers in their studies. With their increasing interest in studying more and more complex mental processes, and in particular as researchers focus on what they term ‘the social brain’, a potential paradox arises from the commitment to the straightforward location of brain function and recognition of the more distributed and intersubjective nature of the objects of their study. Consequently, in order to elicit specific mental activities, such as empathy, the scientists inevitably employ a range of socially based resources, which includes establishing a personal relationship with the volunteers. The scientists themselves see this as ensuring that they can trust that the volunteers will participate in the ways intended. But in contrast, the article argues that the central feature is actually the creation of a sense of intimacy, which serves to align the expectations and experiences of volunteer and researcher. Yet, while this relationship is necessary in order to ensure the required mental state is generated, during the experiment itself a great deal of work is then done to ensure it can be excluded from the final conceptualization of mental activity. (From the abstract.)
In other words, Cohn examines the issue of how “objective measures” can be derived from what is a necessarily an inter-subjective process.
See also: Anatomy of an Invention: The Case of MRI
Share on Facebook
The latest episode of In Our Time discusses the development and evolution of neuroscience (here). Although the focus is primarily on the present, historical aspects are included as well.
In the mid-19th century a doctor had a patient who had suffered a stroke. The patient was unable to speak save for one word. The word was ‘Tan’ which became his name. When Tan died, the doctor discovered damage to the left side of his brain and concluded that the ability to speak was housed there.
This is how neuroscience used to work — by examining the dead or investigating the damaged — but now things have changed. Imaging machines and other technologies enable us to see the active brain in everyday life, to observe the activation of its cells and the mass firing of its neuron batteries.
This discussion builds on an earlier program on the history of the brain (here and at AHP here).
Share on Facebook
Two years ago, the blog BibliOdyssey posted a set of fanciful phrenological “maps” of the brain. These are not the standard Spurzheim, Combe, or Fowler diagrams that one sees in textbooks accompanying the section on phrenology. These are much more intricate and creative, sharing as much in common with the mystical Renaissance speculations of Robert Fludd (image) as with the 19th-century phrenologists.
According to a more recent post about the images in the blog Neuroanthropology, they are “the Brain Maps of Alesha Sivartha …, a fantastical collection of illustrations created by Sivartha as part of his 1912 “The Book of Life: The Spiritual and Physical Constitution of Man.” You can explore the book some through Google, but the better spot to go is Sivartha’s great-great-grandson’s website which covers the book in some detail.”
Share on Facebook
In the latest issue of Social Studies of Science, 38(4), Morana Alac adds a new dimension to the history of visualization provided by the recent special issue of JHN (at AHP here). She explains:
A significant part of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) practice in neuroscience is spent in front of computer screens. To investigate the brain, neuroscientists work with digital images. This paper recovers practical dealings with brain scans in fMRI laboratories to focus on the achievement of seeing in the digital realm. While looking at brain images, neuroscientists gesture and manipulate digital displays to manage and make sense of their experimental data. Their gestural engagements are seen as dynamical phenomenal objects enacted at the junction between the digital world of technology and the world of embodied action.
This latest essay builds on previous work published in, among other places, the Journal of Cognition and Culture and Social Epistemology.
Additional readings on the role of gesture in meaning-making are provided below the fold. Continue reading
Share on Facebook
The latest issue of the Journal of the History of the Neurosciences, 17(3), is wholly devoted to the use of visual images and visualization in the long history of brain studies. Guest editor Amy Ione, in an introduction also made freely available at her blog, explains the contribution she intends it to make:
In the history of the neurosciences, physical images and cognitive visualization offer two frames of reference for thinking about the historical development of the field. The images of neurological illustration, for example, constitute a sourcebook on early medical theories. We can also identify a body of images that articulate how cultural beliefs influenced conclusions about behavior and learning as they relate to anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, and our nervous system. More recently, the enthusiasm generated by brain imaging technologies has highlighted the role of visual images in our efforts to capture the form and function of the brain. In light of the many precursors that show our urge to know the brain has long had a visual component, it seems that the time is ripe to reexamine the historical role of visual images and visualization techniques in enhancing our understanding of the brain and human behavior. The eight articles that comprise this compendium offer a small step in this direction.
For all those who teach the history of psychology, this special issue offers a treasure trove of imagery. My only regret is that — even in the electronic edition — the graphics are all presented in black and white. For such an important collection as this, it is truly a shame that the publisher failed to provide a colour edition even if only for the web. (The image of the journal’s cover, appended to the front of every article, is the only colour in the entire issue!)
Share on Facebook
The British Psychological Society’s flagship journal, The Psychologist, has published two items related to the history of psychology in its latest issue, and it has kindly made them freely available on its website.
The first is an article by Australian psychologist Malcolm Macmillan on the mythology surrounding the case of Phineas Gage, the Vermont railroad worker who had a tamping iron blasted through his head in 1848 and lived to tell about it.
Macmillan’s research on the case was published in An Odd Kind of Fame: Stories of Phineas Gage (MIT, 2002), and he has been interviewed for my podcast series, “This Week in the History of Psychology” (Sept. 11-17). Through extensive examination of the primary documents in the case, MacMillan has discovered that the Gage case has been distorted repeatedly through the century-and-a-half since, to suit the neuropsychological theories of the person writing the account. Continue reading
Share on Facebook
The 5 volumes of the History of Neuroscience in Autobiography, edited by Larry Squire, has been published in full online by the Society for Neuroscience. The volumes are available as separate pdf files or you can select a specific autobiography from one of the volumes (also in pdf) – a total of 76 autobiographies are available.
(Thanks to the Society for the History of Psychology listserv for pointing this out.)
Share on FacebookThe June issue of Brain, 131(6), includes an “occasional paper” by Marjorie Perlman Lorch that reexamines the supposed debate between Paul Broca and John Hughlings Jackson at the 1868 meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BA).
This meeting has been identified as a turning point in favour of Broca’s position on the cerebral localization of language. A return to original sources from key witnesses reveals that the opinion of the British practitioners was generally against Broca’s views. Close examination of contemporaneous materials suggests that no public debate between Jackson and Broca occurred. However, the public discussion after Broca’s presentation records notable concerns over both theoretical issues of localization of function and the status of exceptional clinical cases. A significant stage in the development of current views on the organization of language in the brain is revealed in the accounts of the BA meeting in August 1868 and successive responses to these events in the British press over a period of years.
This latest article contributes to an extensive literature on the history of aphasia. Some of these papers are referenced below the fold. Continue reading
Share on Facebook