Skip to main content
Like
Create new Glog
previous
next
Email share
23 views | 0 likes | 0 reposts
important individuals
Rene Descartes
Descartes was the first person to formally propose that the brain had an effect on behavior. He believed that movements and subsquent behaviors were caused by the flow of 'animal spirits' through the nerves which were hollow tubes that transported fluid causing muscles to be stimulated. This is known as the mechanistic view of behavior.
Franz Josef Gall
After publishing 'Anatomy of the Brain' in 1664, Willis became the first person to document a detailed exploration of the brain. He believed that the structures of the brain itself had influence on behavior, rather than the cerebral spinal fluid or ventricles as was previously believed. He found that there were two types of tissue in the brain; grey matter that made up the outer cortex of the brain and white matter that was fibrous connective tissue found elsewhere in the brain. Willis agreed with Descartes about the matter of the spirits, believing that white matter was a series of channels used to distribute the spirits that were generated in the grey matter.
The father of phrenology, Gall believed that psychological diagnoses could be made from examining a patient's skull. He conducted experiments and extensive structural analyses of the human and animal brain and concluded that the larger the brain, the more complex, felixble, and intelligent behavior the organism could engage in. He also concluded that the brain was the center of higher mental activity.
Thomas Willis
Paul Broca
His ideas orginating in Gall's phrenology, Broca concluded that specific parts of the brain perform specific jobs. Broca is famous for his experiments with a man called "Tan", named so because it was the only word he could say. After the man died, Broca performed an autopsy and found a portion of the man's frontal cortex on the left side to be damaged by a lesion. From studying Tan's brain, broca found that the specific area of the brain had control over the expression of language. The people with damage to this area still read and write, but have trouble verbalizing. This area is now called Broca's area.
HISTORY of NEUROSCIENCE
