Some Historical Origins of Neurobiology

Authored by Henry Strick van Linschoten

Please also refer to our TIMELINEThe historical development of neuroscience relevant to psychotherapy, which displays over 100 key scientific discoveries of relevance to psychotherapy

Antiquity

Humanity has been interested in ways to impact positively on the mind throughout recorded history, including trying to deal with mental problems with psychoactive substances, insight and talking. Going back to the earliest times, it is known that the Egyptians practised brain surgery. Thinking that the brain was the seat of human intelligence, Hippocrates developed a system for categorising mental disorders. Aristotle further organised the biological knowledge of his day believing that the heart was the seat of intelligence. Galen (2nd century AD) knew that the mental faculties, including intelligence, depended on the brain.

Middle Ages – the Islamic age of science

Ibn Sina or Avicenna, a philosopher, physician and scientist largely living in what is today’s Iran, wrote in the 11th century about the influence of the mind on the body, and about the grounding of psychology in physiology. In the 13th century Ibn al Nafis, a Syrian physician, lawyer and theologian mostly living in (today’s) Egypt, was the first to describe the pulmonary circulation of blood.

Seventeenth and eighteenth centuries

William Harvey (1578-1657), an English physician who was educated at Cambridge and Padua and who worked most of his life at St Bartholomew’s Hospital in London, first gave a detailed description of the blood circulation, and started modern embryology. Cells were discovered by Robert Hooke (1635-1703), an English natural philosopher and architect, in 1665. Living cells were first seen under a microscope by Dutchman Anton van Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723) in the 1670s, surrounded by some controversy. He was born and lived in Delft, and had an intensive and at times emotional correspondence with the Royal Society of London.

At the end of the eighteenth century most of the broad outlines of the anatomy of the nervous system were known. In addition, it was known that the brain communicates with the body using nerves, and that different parts of the brain have different functions.

The nineteenth century

Charles Bell (1774-1842), a Scottish surgeon, anatomist, neurologist and theologian, was the founder of clinical neurology.

German Schwann (1810-1882) and Virchow (1821-1902), and German / Polish / Jewish Robert Remak (1815-1865) were responsible for the basic outline of modern cell theory. Robert Remak also made important embryological and neurological discoveries. By the 1860s most of the outlines of modern cell theory had been established.

Buffon (1707-1788), Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802) and Lamarck (1744-1829) were important precursors of evolution theory, but it was really discovered by Charles Darwin (1809-1882) and A.R. Wallace (1823-1913).

The idea of homeostasis was developed by Claude Bernard (1813-1878), a French physiologist, under the name of “milieu intérieur”. In the 1920s it was further developed and renamed by Walter Cannon (1871-1945), an American.

Golgi (1843-1926) of Italy is known for many medical discoveries, but also took a lifelong interest in the nervous system. He competed with Ramón y Cajal (1852-1934) of Spain about who had the correct neuron theory, supporting his reticular theory (that everything in the brain is part of one single network) even in his Nobel Prize speech in 1906, but Ramón’s neuron doctrine built around individual neurons prevailed.

Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920) of Germany was one of the founders of modern psychology, especially but not only experimental psychology. His significantly named “Principles of Physiological Psychology” was first published in 1874.

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) had a substantial biological and medical education, and worked until his late 30s primarily in neurology, about which he published a number of articles. Kraepelin (1856-1926) was one of the most influential psychiatrists of his time, and coined in 1883 the terms neurosis and psychosis.

In the 19th century a lot of work was done in the localisation of functions in the brain. Prominent names were Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1828), Frenchman Paul Broca (1824-1880), Hughlings Jackson (1835-1911) an English neurologist with particular contributions to the understanding of epilepsy, and Carl Wernicke (1848-1905). Gall had stated at the end of the 18th century that all human behaviour was directed from the brain, and that the brain was divided into at least 35 organs.

Some markers in the 20th century

At the start of the 20th century, three major neuroscientific achievements were complete: the concept of the neuron, the processes informing reflexes, and a full mapping of the brain, the latter including the general mammalian cortical maps made by Germans Brodmann (1868-1918) and Oskar Vogt (1870-1959).

Between the start and the middle of the 20th century molecular biology was born as a discipline, built up by the joint work of a large number of biologists.

Genetics had the interesting aspect of having been discovered mid-19th century by the Austrian-Silesian friar Gregor Mendel (1822-1884) without this being noticed. His ideas were rediscovered and this time reached world scientific opinion through the work of the Dutchman Hugo de Vries (1848-1935) and the German Carl Correns (1864-1933).

One of the most prominent American psychiatrists of the 20th century was the Swiss-American Adolf Meyer (1866-1950) who emigrated to the USA in 1892. Two prominent psychoanalysts were Wilhelm Reich (1897-1957), who is regarded as the originator of body therapy, and the Hungarian-American Franz Alexander (1891-1964) who was a pioneering founder of psychosomatic medicine and well-known as a criminologist.

Ethology, a subdiscipline of zoology focusing on animal behaviour, was created by the Austrian zoologist Konrad Lorenz (1903-1989) and the Dutch ethologist Niko Tinbergen (1907-1988).

The function and structure of DNA were discovered by the American Barbara McClintock (1902-1992), Englishman Francis Crick (1916-2004), Irish-New Zealand-British Maurice Wilkins (1916-2004), British-Jewish Rosalind Franklin (1920-1958) and the American James D Watson (1928-)

Resources

There does not appear to be a general history of biology with a focus on neuroscience. Bear et al. (2007)and Kandel et al. (2000) have short introductions covering some milestones in the history.

References

Bear, M.F., Connors, B.W. & Paradiso, M.A. (2007). Neuroscience: Exploring the Brain (3rd edition). Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott, Williams & Wilkins. http://www.amazon.com/Neuroscience-Exploring-Brain-3rd-Edition/

Kandel, E.R., Schwartz, J.H. & Jessell, T.M. (Eds.) (2000). Principles of Neural Science (4th edition). New York: McGraw-Hill.