Journal of the History of the Neurosciences最新文献

{"title":"NeurHistAlert 28.","authors":"Frank W Stahnisch, Paul Foley","doi":"10.1080/0964704X.2025.2575182","DOIUrl":"10.1080/0964704X.2025.2575182","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":49997,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the History of the Neurosciences","volume":" ","pages":"697-712"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2025-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145483558","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"From testicles to brain: Understanding Dante's dream through medieval medicine.","authors":"Francesco Brigo, Paolo Benna, Lorenzo Lorusso, Enrico Volpe, Giorgio Zanchin","doi":"10.1080/0964704X.2025.2461785","DOIUrl":"10.1080/0964704X.2025.2461785","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article examines Dante da Maiano's response to Dante Alighieri's dream in the Vita Nova, often seen as a mocking reply to the young poet's vision. Building on Bruno Nardi's reinterpretation (1959), which suggests a medical explanation rather than mere ridicule, this study analyzes the sonnet through medieval physiological and medical theories. Dante da Maiano's diagnosis, influenced by Galenic and Aristotelian thought, links the poet's delirious dream to harmful vapors rising from the testicles to the brain. These vapors, produced by excessive heat and imbalance in the reproductive organs, were thought to cause mental disturbances by drying out the brain, a common medieval explanation for lovesickness. The article highlights the conceptual connection between the brain and the testicles, recognized in medieval medical theory, especially in the works of Galen and Albert the Great. By situating Dante da Maiano's response within this scientific framework, the article reinterprets his advice-like washing the testicles to mitigate harmful vapors-as a serious medical recommendation rather than as derision. This perspective enhances our understanding of the interplay between physical health and mental states in medieval thought, offering fresh insights into Dante's dream and its broader medical and philosophical implications.</p>","PeriodicalId":49997,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the History of the Neurosciences","volume":" ","pages":"517-525"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2025-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143537955","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"David Ferrier's \"complex whole\": Early traces of a \"brain network\" concept.","authors":"Cornelis Stam","doi":"10.1080/0964704X.2024.2405116","DOIUrl":"10.1080/0964704X.2024.2405116","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Currently, the idea that the brain is a complex network of interacting brain regions is hardly controversial. The rapid development of this field is often attributed to the emergence of powerful brain-imaging techniques and, around the millennium, the merging of the neuroscience of brain networks with modern mathematical graph theory. However, little is known about the historical roots of this concept. It is interesting to know when the first traces of a concept of brain networks can be found in the work of early neuroscientists, how this concept evolved over time, and what factors may have influenced this evolution. This study aims to set a first step in addressing these questions by a detailed analysis of David Ferrier's classic study, <i>The Functions of the Brain</i>. From this analysis it will become clear that, in addition to a clear notion of localized functions in the brain, Ferrier speculated in several places about the need for several of these brain regions to communicate and interact in order to bring about higher brain functions. He referred to this perspective on the brain as a \"complex whole,\" which could be interpreted as an early precursor of the modern concept of brain networks.</p>","PeriodicalId":49997,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the History of the Neurosciences","volume":" ","pages":"461-471"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2025-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142331347","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Ivan Pavlov's conditioned reflexes and Ivane Beritashvili's doctrine of image-driven behavior: Materialism, myth, and politics.","authors":"S Brian Hood","doi":"10.1080/0964704X.2024.2405110","DOIUrl":"10.1080/0964704X.2024.2405110","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Ivane Beritashvili has been regarded as an \"anti-Pavlovian\" for nearly a century. One respect in which Beritashvili is said to be anti-Pavlovian is in granting an explanatory role to subjective mental states in his doctrine of image-driven behavior. In this article, I aim to problematize the anti-Pavlovian assessment and argue that Beritashvili did not deviate from Pavlovian scientific norms, minor points of theoretical and methodological differences between them notwithstanding. Furthermore, several respects in which Beritashvili is claimed to be anti-Pavlovian are ways in which he resembles Pavlov. Turning my attention to Beritashvili's critics in the Soviet Union, those responsible for his censure, I argue that it is the critique of Beritashvili that runs counter to the norms Pavlov embraced. I contest the claim that his alleged deviations from Pavlovian orthodoxy justify classification as anti-Pavlovian in a sense that is either historically accurate or philosophically interesting, and submit that the grounds on which Beritashvili is derided as anti-Pavlovian would also justify labeling Pavlov himself as anti-Pavlovian. Informed by the case of Beritashvili and others who were politically persecuted for their scientific work in the Soviet Union, I conclude with reflections on science, politics, and the intrusion of the latter in the former.</p>","PeriodicalId":49997,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the History of the Neurosciences","volume":" ","pages":"443-460"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2025-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142331349","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"David Ferrier's second monkey ('monkey F'): The inaugural experimental studies of the auditory cortex.","authors":"Andrew J Larner, Timothy D Griffiths","doi":"10.1080/0964704X.2024.2436676","DOIUrl":"10.1080/0964704X.2024.2436676","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The story of David Ferrier's demonstration at the International Medical Congress in London in August 1881 of a monkey experimentally rendered hemiplegic by a focal surgical brain lesion-prompting Charcot's observation, \"C'est un malade!\"-is well known as a seminal event in the history of the localization of functions in the cerebral cortex. Less well known is the fact that, on the same occasion, Ferrier demonstrated a second monkey, known as monkey F, apparently deaf as a consequence of bilateral temporo-sphenoidal brain lesions. The purpose of this article is, first, to give a chronological account of this demonstration and subsequent related events, including Ferrier's trial under the Vivisection Act, the publication of the pathological findings in the animal's brain, the dispute about the localization of the \"auditory centre\" with Edward Schäfer, and the first glimmerings of human homologues of cortical deafness. Second, we briefly reappraise Ferrier's findings in light of current concepts of the central substrates of complex sound processing.</p>","PeriodicalId":49997,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the History of the Neurosciences","volume":"34 3","pages":"495-508"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2025-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144700216","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Sesquicentenary of the knee jerk reflex: The contributions of Hughlings Jackson, Horsley, and Sherrington.","authors":"Guleed Adan, Andrew J Larner","doi":"10.1080/0964704X.2024.2443142","DOIUrl":"10.1080/0964704X.2024.2443142","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The knee jerk reflex, emblematic of neurology and central to clinical practice, marks its 150th anniversary in 2025. First introduced to the neurological literature in 1875 through independent reports by Wilhelm Erb and Carl Westphal, this reflex has since evolved from a clinical curiosity to a diagnostic staple, although its initial interpretation was debated. Erb viewed it as a spinal reflex, whereas Westphal questioned its reflex nature, considering mechanical muscle excitation. Early pioneers such as John Hughlings Jackson, Victor Horsley, and Charles Sherrington made significant contributions to understanding the knee jerk's physiology, exploring its diagnostic relevance, its relation to spinal cord function, and its afferent pathways. These investigations established the knee jerk as a cornerstone of neurological examination, exemplifying the integration of clinical observation with experimental science.</p>","PeriodicalId":49997,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the History of the Neurosciences","volume":" ","pages":"509-516"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2025-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142957966","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Henry Hun and his family: Three foundational stories in the history of nineteenth-century American neurology, Part II. Edward Hun (1842-1880) and the beginnings of neurological research in nineteenth-century America.","authors":"Spencer Weig","doi":"10.1080/0964704X.2024.2429040","DOIUrl":"10.1080/0964704X.2024.2429040","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Edward Reynolds Hun is easily eclipsed by his father, Thomas (1808-1896), and his younger brother, Henry (1854-1924), in historical accounts of the evolution of neurology as a clinical specialty and academic discipline in nineteenth-century America. His early educational pathway, including a postgraduate year in Paris, was typical for sons of the wealthy seeking a medical degree. On his return from Europe, he embarked on a research career in neuropsychiatry seeking to uncover biochemical and pathological underpinnings for psychiatric disorders. In addition to standard postmortem examinations, he used the most up-to-date technological advances such as sphygmography. He was also one of the first Americans to publish photomicrographs of muscle obtained by biopsy. In his mid-30s he became a charter member of the American Neurological Association and was appointed professor of diseases of the nervous system at Albany Medical College. His health then rapidly deteriorated, leading to his early death at age 37 of an unclear neurologic disorder. His career intersected with those of other notables in late-nineteenth-century American neurology, including John P. Gray, William A. Hammond, Edward Constant Séguin, and Edward Charles Spitzka.</p>","PeriodicalId":49997,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the History of the Neurosciences","volume":" ","pages":"472-494"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2025-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142795870","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"In memoriam Robert Barry Daroff, M.D. (1936-2025).","authors":"Douglas J Lanska","doi":"10.1080/0964704X.2025.2492083","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0964704X.2025.2492083","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Robert Daroff (1936-2025) was one of the most influential neurologists of the late-twentieth and early-twenty-first centuries. Following education at Ivy League research universities, Daroff was the first U.S. neurologist to serve in a frontline combat unit during the Vietnam war. Subsequently, when neuro-ophthalmology was <i>exclusively</i> an ophthalmology subspecialty, Daroff pioneered neuro-ophthalmology as a subspecialty of neurology, training with neuro-ophthalmologists Lawton Smith and William Hoyt. Daroff then established his own pioneering Ocular Motor Laboratory in Miami in conjunction with Louis Dell'Osso. Daroff introduced the simultaneous binocular recording of each eye separately, allowing identification of dysmetria in normal and diseased individuals, and ultimately measurement and modeling of pathology in the pursuit and saccadic systems. After his appointment as neurology chairman at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland (1980), he became a national and international leader in neurology, making fundamental contributions to neurologic education and oversight of scientific integrity, and the subdisciplines of neuro-ophthalmology, headache, and neurotology. As Editor-in-Chief of <i>Neurology</i>, Daroff garnered national recognition for boldly addressing allegations of scientific misconduct. Although holding many high-profile roles, including as president of both the American Neurological Association and the American Headache Society, Daroff considered his greatest medical legacy to be the residents he trained.</p>","PeriodicalId":49997,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the History of the Neurosciences","volume":" ","pages":"1-48"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2025-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144062955","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Jean-Martin Charcot, member of thesis juries at the Paris Medical School (1862-1893).","authors":"Olivier Walusinski","doi":"10.1080/0964704X.2024.2344418","DOIUrl":"10.1080/0964704X.2024.2344418","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Jean-Martin Charcot is considered the founding father of modern neurology. There are many general and specialized biographies about him, the result being that a new text is unexpected or would likely amount to plagiarism. However, part of the duties for Charcot's medical professorship have not, to date, been studied at all. This article will focus on the role of Charcot as a member of doctorate juries and, in particular, as the president of these juries. I have reviewed around 12,500 theses one by one. These were defended at the Paris medical school from 1862, Charcot's first year as an <i>agrégé</i> (assistant professor), to his death in 1893. Among the theses, I have selected all of those that discuss neuropsychiatry in the broadest terms (3,663). I have paid particular attention to all of those for which Charcot was part of the jury. This involves 608 theses. All of the data were entered in a database (Filemaker) to facilitate identifying those theses corresponding to one or more of the criteria. Statistical comparisons were then carried out (Excel spreadsheet). In addition to these results, brief individualized surveys were conducted on theses selected for their representativeness, either for the subject matter (multiple sclerosis, aphasia, tabes, general paralysis, etc.) or for specific criteria (foreigners, women, etc.), but all of the theses were defended before a jury that included Charcot. This makes it possible to track how the areas of study in the medical world changed over time, and particularly those of Charcot. The juries Charcot was obliged to be a part of, without any particular ties to the candidate and/or any involvement in the selection and supervision of the work, must be differentiated from the thesis juries for his students. In the latter case, the thesis subjects were most often linked to Charcot's researches. Providing a thesis subject was motivated, in certain cases, by the desire to disseminate new data in the medical profession, not only by dint of the theses themselves but also through the reports that the medical press published regularly (e.g. the diagnosis of various types of shaking) and through the commercial publication of these data, in some cases with a preface by Charcot. In other cases, the thesis was a step in the long process of developing a theory (hysteria). Or it led to a flowering of new ideas, insufficiently proven, which Charcot would only cover in his <i>Lessons</i> once there was convincing confirmation (amyotrophy). This rich cornucopia gives rise to certain neglected nuggets, as well as works that have entered the classical corpus-for example, the theses of Léopold Ordenstein, Ivan Poumeau, Isaac Bruhl, Albert Gombault, and Pierre Janet.</p>","PeriodicalId":49997,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the History of the Neurosciences","volume":" ","pages":"185-205"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2025-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141248708","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Charcot and Léon Daudet: A missed love story?","authors":"Julien Bogousslavsky, Laurent Tatu","doi":"10.1080/0964704X.2024.2372240","DOIUrl":"10.1080/0964704X.2024.2372240","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Biographies, articles, and meetings devoted to the founder of modern neurology, Jean-Martin Charcot, are typically dithyrambic, if not hagiographic. It seems that the striking professional and familial qualities of Charcot have erased any other characteristic of the person, and scratches on the Master image commonly have not been well accepted. With this in mind, it is interesting to present and evaluate the rather negative opinions on Charcot by the famous French writer Léon Daudet, who initially was very close to the Charcots through his father, Alphonse Daudet, and who wrote rather extensively on Charcot in his diary and memoirs. Our point is not to underline these writings as the \"truth\" about Charcot's personality and life (Daudet, who was a prominent extreme right-wing figure, was known to exaggerate and play with his sharp opinions), but Daudet's criticisms paradoxically provide a fascinating perspective, which may help to reconstruct better who Charcot really was in counterbalancing a bit the overcrowded, politically correct, praising group.</p>","PeriodicalId":49997,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the History of the Neurosciences","volume":" ","pages":"322-330"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2025-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141601995","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}