Minds behind the Brain: A History of the Pioneers and Their Discoveries

379 Pages·1999·27.375 MB·English

by  Stanley Finger

Minds Behind the Brain
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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
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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
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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