Minds Behind the Brain This page intentionally left blank Minds Behind the Brain A History of the Pioneers and Their Discoveries Stanley Finger, PH.D. OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Oxford New York Auckland Bangkok Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kolkata Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi Sao Paulo Shanghai Taipei Tokyo Toronto Copyright © 2000 by Stanley Finger First published by Oxford University Press, Inc., 2000 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 www.oup.com First issued as an Oxford University Press paperback, 2005 ISBN=13: 978-0-19-518182-6 ISBN=10: 0-19-518182-4 Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication maybe reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. The Library of Congress has cataloged the cloth edition as follows: Finger, Stanley. Minds behind the brain : a history of the pioneers and their discoveries / Stanley Finger. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBNO-19-508571-X 1. Neurosciences—History 2. Brain—Research—History. I. Title. QP353.F548 1999 612.8'2'09—dc21 99-17110 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 21 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper To my wife Wendy and our two sons, Robert and Bradley This page intentionally left blank Aside from increased feelings of self-esteem and the approval of our own conscience, the conquest of a new truth is undoubtedly the greatest adventure to which a man can aspire. —Santiago Ramon y Cajal Advice for a Young Investigator This page intentionally left blank Contents Preface xi 1 Introduction: A Voyage Across Time I 2 An Ancient Egyptian Physician: The Dawn of Neurology 7 3 Hippocrates: The Brain as the Organ of Mind 21 4 Galen: The Birth of Experimentation 39 5 Andreas Vesalius: The New "Human" Neuroanatomy 53 6 Rene Descartes: The Mind-Body Problem 69 7 Thomas Willis: The Functional Organization of the Brain 83 8 Luigi Galvani: Electricity and the Nerves 101 9 Franz Joseph Gall: The Cerebral Organs of Mind 119 10 Paul Broca: Cortical Localization and Cerebral Dominance 137 11 David Ferrier and Eduard Hitzig: The Experimentalists Map the Cerebral Cortex 155 12 Jean-Martin Charcot: Clinical Neurology Comes of Age 177 13 Santiago Ramon y Cajal: From Nerve Nets to Neuron Doctrine 197 14 Charles Scott Sherrington: The Integrated Nervous System 217 15 Edgar D. Adrian: Coding in the Nervous System 239 16 Otto Loewi and Henry Dale: The Discovery of Neurotransmitters 259 17 Roger W. Sperry and Rita Levi-Montalcini: From Neural Growth to "Split Brains" 281 18 Pioneers and Discoveries in the Brain Sciences 301 Notes 311 Index 349