When was neuroscience founded

These events are certainly not all of the important events to take place in neuroscience First written record about the nervous system ca. Believes brain is seat of mental process B. Texas Med. Branch, Galveston. Milestones in Neuroscience Research.

The following dates and events were gathered from several sources. Branch, Galveston 0 A. Mary of Bethlehem Hospital is used exclusively for the mentally ill - Institution for the mentally ill established in Valencia, Spain. Separate trochlear and abducens nerves identified - Bartolomeo Eustachio publishes The Examination of the Organ of Hearing - Giulio Cesare Aranzi coins the term hippocampus - Constanzo Varolio names the pons - Constanzo Varolio is first to cut brain starting at its base - Girolamo Mercuriali writes De nervis opticis to describe optic nerve anatomy - Felix Platter states that the lens only focuses light and that the retina is where images are formed - Georg Bartisch publishes Ophthalmodouleia: das ist Augendienst with drawings of the eye - A.

Piccolomini distinguishes between cortex and white matter - Guilio Cesare Aranzi describes ventricles and hippocampus. He also demonstrates that the retina has a reversed image - Zacharias Janssen invents the compound microscope - Sir Walter Raleigh mentions arrow poison in his book Discovery of the Large, Rich and Beautiful Empire of Guiana. Duverney introduces the term "brachial plexus". Le Roy uses electroconvulsive therapy for mental illness - Arne-Charles Lorry demonstrates that damage to the cerebellum affects motor coordination - Domenico F.

Cotugno describes spinal subarachnoid cerebrospinal fluid; shows that ventricular and spinal fluids are connected - The interventricular foramen Foramen of Monroe is named after Alexander Monroe; it was described earlier by Vieussens - Albrecht von Haller provides scientific description of the cerebrospinal fluid - John Walsh conducts experiments on torpedo electric fish - John Fothergill describes trigeminal neuralgia tic douloureux, Fothergill's syndrome - Sir Joseph Priestley discovers nitrous oxide - Franz Anton Mesmer introduces "animal magnetism" later called hypnosis - M.

Magendie provides first evidence of cerebellum role in equilibration - John P. Harrison first argues against phrenology - Jean-Baptiste Bouillaud presents cases of loss of speech after frontal lesions - Robert B. Todd discusses the role of the cerebral cortex in mentation, corpus striatum in movement and midbrain in emotion - Luigi Rolando describes the sulcus that separates the precentral and postcentral gyri - Johannes Muller publishes theory of "specific nerve energies" - E.

Chevalier coins the term microtome - Francois Leuret names the Rolandic sulcus for Luigi Rolando - Filippo Pacini describes the Pacinian corpuscle - Moritz Heinrich Romberg describes a test for conscious proprioception Romberg test - Adolph Hannover uses chromic acid to harden nervous tissue - Jules Gabriel Francois Baillarger discusses the connections between white and gray matter of cerebral cortex - Adolphe Hannover discovers the ganglion cells of the retina - Dorothea Lynde Dix investigates brutality within mental hospitals in the United States - Benedikt Stilling is first to study spinal cord in serial sections - Crawford W.

Long uses ether on man - Francois Magendie describes the median opening in the roof of the fourth ventricle foramen of Magendie - James Braid coins the term "hypnosis" - Robert Remak provides first illustration of 6-layered cortex - Horace Wells uses nitrous oxide during a tooth extraction - Ernst Heinrich Weber and Edward Weber discover that stimulation of the vagus nerve inhibits the heart - William Morton demonstrates ether anesthesia at Massachusetts General Hospital - Chloroform anesthesia used by James Young Simpson - Chloroform anesthesia used by Marie Jean Pierre Flourens - American Medical Association is founded - The American Association for the Advancement of Science is founded - Phineas Gage has his brain pierced by an iron rod - Richard Owen coins the word "notochord" - Hermann von Helmholtz measures the speed of frog nerve impulses.

Kolliker describes how motor nerves originate from the neurons in the anterior horn of the spinal cord - George Meissner and Rudolf Wagner describe encapsulated nerve endings later known as "Meissner's corpuscles" - William Benjamin Carpenter proposes "sensory ganglion" thalamus as seat of consciousness - Louis P.

From the mids the BRA promoted neuroscience in the UK, organizing conferences and workshops, acting as a lobby group, promoting new courses, degrees, centres and chairs in the neurosciences and gradually engaging in the ethical and social implications emerging from this new field of research.

Cavanagh, Barry A. Whitefield, and Oliver L. See further information about the early years of the BNA in the Archive, below. The origins of the BNA lie in the s, when neursoscence first emerged as a disclipine in its own right.

It was a belief he shared with the ancient Egyptians, whose Book of the Dead endorses carefully preserving the heart of a mummy, but recommends scooping out and discarding the brain. Today, the supreme role of the heart lives on only as a metaphor for our intuitive, emotional selves. There is evidence, however, that at least some Egyptians knew about the importance of the brain. The papyrus discusses the brain, the meninges, the spinal cord and cerebrospinal fluid. It contains details of 48 medical cases, including seven that deal directly with the brain, which indicate that the Egyptian author knew the brain controls movement.

For example, LoLordo and Ross retracted their own articles because the rescoring of videotapes on which the published data were based did not confirm the original findings. Zhang et al. If you are falsely accused of scientific misconduct, you will need to use your scientific archive to demonstrate your research integrity see Goldenring, On the other hand, some authors have argued that most published research is not replicable Ioannidis, , while others argue that failure to replicate is an inherent property of scientific research Redish et al.

Ioannidis has presented 12 steps for improving the reliability and validity of published research. Even if you are certain that none of your own research articles will be retracted, you need to beware of referring to retracted articles in your research articles, reviews and grant proposals.

When writing review articles one must also beware of retracted articles. Uher and Weaver a wrote a commentary on a article by Perroud et al. As a result, Uher and Weaver b had to retract their commentary on this article. In this case, the embarrassment of having to retract an article had nothing to do with the reviewers, who were innocent victims of a third party.

Thus, the Retraction Watch website and database Brainard, is becoming an essential resource for preventing neuroscientists from becoming victims of scientific malpractice by others. In summary, history is a personal issue in neuroscience.

Each of your research projects relies on previous studies, methodology and theories. Once your article is published, it becomes a part of history. Establishing a personal archive for each research project is critical to ensure that future researchers can gain access to your data and that your research documents are available for historical analysis.

Such an archive is also essential for other researchers who wish to replicate your experiments and to defend yourself against claims of scientific misconduct and the danger of having your articles retracted.

Finally, you must be wary of citing articles that have been retracted. History is more than a matter of cataloging and preserving laboratory notes, specimens, equipment, drawings and photographs. This material needs to be incorporated into the teaching and practice of neuroscience research.

To make history relevant to students of neuroscience, faculty could integrate historical topics into their neuroscience teaching and research using websites, artifacts and historical publications. Through the study of history, students can be introduced to the historical context of their research and learn how it is integrated with other disciplines and society in general.

There are biographies of many neuroscienctists, including Galen Mattern, , Helmholtz Meulders, , Golgi Mazzarello, , and Pavlov Todes, The most common way that neuroscientists do historical research is to identify past studies on the topic of interest using reference citations, PUBMED, Web of Science or Google Scholar as a guide.

However, this often does not encompass the many texts located on library shelves or in library special collections of rare books that must be accessed separately from the main library catalog. Archives keep letters, diaries, photographs, memos and other documents donated by scientists or their families.

They may include drafts of articles, unpublished manuscripts, lab data books, and other valuable information. Newspaper clippings, awards, medals, and honorary degrees also find their way into archives. The National Archives of each country also contain materials on the history of individual neuroscientists.

Historical objects may be kept in museums, and there are many museums with brain collections that provide essential resources for studying comparative neurobiology and the history of neuroscience Iwaniuk, , ; Fobbs and Johnson, ; Manger, and other articles in this volume. The importance of saving anatomical specimens in museum collections is that they can be re-analyzed using modern methods to gain new insights into neural disorders.

Beyond these physical locations, information on the history of the neurosciences is readily accessible through the internet. The internet is an incredibly powerful tool for the study of the history of neuroscience and for engaging students in historical research. Even the most ancient texts can be accessed online. There are also virtual archives and virtual museums. The European Brain Museum Tour website 7 allows anyone to locate museums with brain collections at the click of a button.

Developing a virtual museum of neuroscience was the reasoning behind the creation of the Oxford History of Medical Sciences Project 8 where students and researchers can access slides, objects, art, stories, case histories and seminars that are relevant to conducting historical research.

There is also the ability to analyze historical equipment using this website. Historical research also involves personal interactions: contacting the colleagues, students, friends and families of neuroscientists to locate hidden information about their lives and work.

Former students and colleagues of neuroscientists may have letters, manuscripts and photographs stored away in filing cabinets. There may be old materials in university store-rooms that have never been sent to the archives.

Still, other historical artifacts have been stored in back rooms of university departments, or in display cases in corridors. Other documents reside in the basements and attics of the friends and families of neuroscientists. Interviews with colleagues, students, spouses, children and grandchildren of neuroscientists may turn up unseen documents, as well as valuable information that has never been published.

Such family documents are not publically available and are on the verge of being lost if someone is not there to salvage them. Once all such information has been collected, one must sort and arrange it and decide how to preserve it.

Too often there are large gaps, missing information and one-sided conversations. One may find the letters from A to B, but none of the letters from B to A, and so inferences must be made about the information they might contain. History is the study of the present traces of the past or the memories of the past. Thus libraries, archives, and museums are all repositories of the memories of the history of neuroscience. However, we are now facing a number of problems in preserving the history of neuroscience Lorusso et al.

Many of these repositories have selective memories; some select only certain items to keep and others have political and personal preferences for what is collected. Some archives have online indexes and others do not. Some archives no longer have archivists. Some archives and museums have been closed and the materials are no longer accessible.

Old books, just the kind of thing a historian looks for, which have not been taken out of the library for years, get discarded, so are no longer available to anyone. Archival materials sit in boxes without being indexed and museums reject donations of old equipment as they have no space for it. Most museums exhibit only a small fraction of their holdings; the rest is in storage and may become lost. My aim in this article is to encourage the preservation of these historical documents.

Historical research is interesting, illuminating and enlightening. To be able to conceptualize the perspectives of older neuroscientists gives us an ability to understand their discoveries more deeply and make sense of our own research, theories, and methodology. In addition, historical research allows one to hear exciting stories and meet interesting people.

If these are not appealing as reasons to study history, some may find consolation in the fact that doing historical research often involves travel to incredible places. Some examples from my own research illustrate how the search for historical documents can be interesting and exciting: academic detective work. Sets of exact replicas of these tools were for sale in the gift shop and I bought one to use for teaching Figure 2.

These tools include hooks, knives, probes, needles, spatulas, spoons, and knife handles. A scalpel handle carved in the shape of a mouse is also linked to Asklepios see Figure 2. This increases their interest in history. Figure 2. Surgical tools from the 3rd century AD.

These tools are replicas of those on exhibit at the National Archelogical Museum of Greece and were purchased at the museum in Thessaloniki, Greece. On the far left is a copper-alloy spoon for preparing and taking medicines and applying them to wounds. Next to it is a copper-alloy knife handle that is decorated with a small animal, possibly a mouse, which links the instrument with Asklepios. The mouse was seen as a daemonic being with prophetic powers and was associated with Apollo Smintheus, who protected people against evil and epidemics.

The blade is missing. Because blades were made of iron, they often rusted away. The item at the top of the six items shown horizontally is a copper-alloy double hook which is decorated with silver bands at the head and in the middle.

It was used during surgical operations on blood vessels aneurysms , on membranes in the eye, and on tonsils, and to clasp pieces of tissue and the edges of wounds during surgery. The second horizontal item is a copper-alloy knife used to make incisions in the flesh during operations. The third item is a copper-alloy spoon-shaped probe that was used to prepare and apply medicines. The fourth is a copper-alloy needle used to sew bandages applied to wounds.

The fifth is a copper-alloy spatula probe used to mix and apply medicines in deep surgical incisions, to diagnose and measure the depth of injuries, and more rarely to clean internal wounds to the nose and other, larger wounds. The bottom item is also a copper-alloy spatula probe.

On the far right is a copper-alloy clasp with serrated ends. This was used to clasp or cut away flesh and tumors during surgical operations. Next to this is another copper-alloy spatula used to clean wounds and incisions, scrape away fistulae, and remove foreign bodies and broken bones from the ear and nose. In eye operations, it was used to remove cysts. It was also used to prepare and apply medicines, particularly to the eyes.

These tools are described by Bliquez When I left I ordered my own copies of the prints to use for teaching. On this tour, we visited the town of Vinci Figure 3 , the Leonardo museum and the house where Leonardo was born.

In Florence, we visited other Leonardo da Vinci museums, libraries, and exhibits where we purchased books on Leonardo and prints of his drawings. In researching Leonardo da Vinci as a neuroscientist, a tour of Italy is interesting and exciting. Figure 3. It also contains slides presented to him by other leading contemporary neuroscientists. Much of the histological data behind these incredible discoveries are available for research at the University of Oxford.

Figure 4. Donald O. Figure 5. During our visit, we not only presented lectures but also visited the laboratories used by Pavlov. These examples illustrate some of the excitement of the search for the history of neuroscience. It is interesting because you discover things that you would never have expected.

It is illuminating as it shows the ideas and methods used to make some of the basic discoveries in neuroscience. Finally, it is enlightening to view the lives of famous neuroscientists through their writings, letters and photographs and through the eyes of their students and families. In the search for the history of neuroscience, you have the opportunities to meet interesting people, hear fascinating stories and to travel to far away places.

Finally, the study of the history of science helps you to make sense of your own research. The history of neuroscience can be important for students and researchers who can use insights from the history of science to illuminate their work.

By methodologically investigating historical data, models, hypotheses and experiments, alternatives to contemporary theories can be contemplated. Lessons from the history of neuroscience also reveal the cultural context and social responsibility of those investigating the brain. Popular ideas about the brain influence the direction that neuroscientists take in their research. Especially in the past half-century, new discoveries in neuroscience have had a widespread popular appeal.

Nerves and brain function have become a powerful analogy in spheres of thought far removed from neuroscience. In order to avoid repeating prejudices, neuroscientists can take a history of science approach to their discipline. Since all research relies on history, and each research project has its own history, neuroscientists rely on their historical records to demonstrate their research integrity.

Without history, whether in the form of actual physical objects, written documents, or personal reminiscences, neuroscientists have little context for their contemporary work. Historical approaches can be integrated into research and teaching in neuroscience and many neuroscientists will find interest and pleasure in the study of the history of neuroscience. The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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