Transcript Brain and Behavior - University of Wisconsin

Brain and Behavior
Mental Illness
• In ancient Mesopotamia, mental illness was believed
to be caused by demonic possession.
• Priest-doctors treated the mentally ill with
magical/religious (e.g., exorcisms, incantations,
prayer, atonement) and other mystical rituals
intended to drive out the evil spirit.
Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus
1700 BC
Ancient Egyptians - oldest written
record using the word "brain”.
• 48 cases studies
• injured by falls (maybe from working
on monuments or buildings)
• victims of battle (many wounds
appear to be caused by spears, clubs
or daggers).
Imhotep
Aristotle – Heart is the most important
organ in the body.
• Mental Functions located in the
heart.
• Lungs and brain simply existed to
cool the heart.
• Based on studies of chick embryos
• Held that people with heavy upper bodies were
intellectually dull due to the extra weight
bearing on the heart.
Ancient Greece
Epilepsy considered a divine punishment for
sinners. Depending on the symptoms the Greeks
would attribute the fits to a different deity such as
Cybele, Poseidon, Mars, Hekate, Hermes or Apollo.
According to the Hippocratic texts, for example, if
the symptoms included teeth gnashing or
convulsions on the right side, then epilepsy was
attributed to Cybele, whereas if the patient
screamed like a horse, then god Poseidon was to
blame.
According to Plutarch (50-120 A.D.), all babies in
ancient Sparta were examined by a council of
the elders; epileptic babies were left to
Apothetae, a short chasm of the mountain
Taygetus (Plutarch, 1914).
Hippocrates (circa 400 BC)
• The theory of the Four Humors of the body, ~ blood,
black bile, yellow bile, and phlegm, involved a
principle of balance.
• Health was a consequence of balance between the
four humors, while disease or sickness was the result
of an imbalance.
• Argued medicine is not philosophy, and therefore
must be practiced on a case-by-case basis rather
than from first principles.
Four Humors
Also argued that “epilepsy” was not a divine
disease, but had physical causes.
Galen of Pergamon
130 – 200 AD
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medical training in Smyrna and Alexandria.
surgeon to the gladiators of Pergamos.
physician of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius
searched for physiological reasons for
different behaviors in humans.
The Nine Temperaments
• Based on four humors but allowed for nine
possible “temperaments” based on the levels
of the four humors. In the four least desirable
temperaments, one characteristic dominated
the other three. In four others, a pair of
temperaments dominate the other two. Galen
referred to these as either “sanguine”,
“choleric”, “melancholy”, and “phlegmatic”. In
the ideal temperament, all four humors are
balanced.
Psycho-Surgery
Brain surgery is perhaps the oldest of the
practiced medical arts. Evidence from as early
as 5100 BC
Trepanation is the removal of a
piece of skull with out damage
to the underlying blood-vessels,
meninges and brain.
• earliest trepanned skulls, the holes
were made by scraping the bone
away with sharp stones.
• later, primitive drilling tools were
• used to drill small holes arranged in
circles, after which the piece of
bone inside the circle was removed.
• The late Medieval period introduction of mechanical drilling
and sawing instruments,
• The procedure was used
as a treatment for
conditions such as
headaches, epilepsy,
hydrocephalus and
mental disorders.
These were presumably attributed to
possession by evil demons, such that a
hole in the skull would have provided the
spirits a passage for escape.
Stone of Madness
A curious belief held by some in the Middle Ages
was that mental illness was caused by a “stone
of madness” situated anywhere in the body, but
most commonly in the head. Many quack
healers roamed Europe performing sham
operations on the mentally ill, removing the
stone, and affecting a cure, which, presumably,
was very short-lived.
Hieronymus Bosch c. 1494
Pieter Bruegel, c. 1550
Jan Sanders van Hemessen,
c. 1550
Physiognomy
Physical features directly
related to personality and
mental processes
Franz Joseph Gall
1758 - 1828
• That moral and intellectual faculties are innate
• That their exercise or manifestation depends on
organization
• That the brain is the organ of all the propensities,
sentiments and faculties
• That the brain is composed of as many particular
organs as there are propensities, sentiments and
faculties which differ essentially from each other.
• That the form of the head or cranium represents
the form of the brain, and thus reflects the
relative development of the brain organs.
He was a pioneer in the study of the localization
of mental functions in the brain. Around 1800,
he developed "cranioscopy", a method to divine
the personality and development of mental and
moral faculties on the basis of the external
shape of the skull.
Claimed there are some 26 "organs" on the
surface of the brain which affect the contour of
the skull, including a "murder organ" present in
murderers.
Brain organs that were used got bigger and
those which were not used shrunk, causing the
skull to rise and fall with organ development.
Gall's early work was with criminals and the
insane and his brain "organs" reflected this
interest.
Phrenology
- phrenological theories best accepted in
England, where ruling class used it to justify the
inferiority of colonial subjects.
Debunking
Napoleon Bonaparte was furious
because Gall's interpretation of his
skull "missed" some noble qualities
he thought he had.
In 1808, the Institute of France
assembled a committee of savants.
- declared phrenology was not to be
trusted.
Pierre Flourens 1794- 1867
Ablation and stimulation methods and many
experimental investigations on mammalian
species, especially rabbits and pigeons.
Removing Cerebellum which Gall claimed was
the organ of amativeness (sexual love) from
dogs, did not make them less amorous, but did
impair their co-ordination.
Phrenology remained
Popular in the United
States from 1820 to
1850
Phrenology remained a
POP Science into the
1930’s
Bumps(1932)
1838 - 1911
Quack Quack!!
• Phrenology gave rise to the invention of the
psychograph by Lavery and White, a
machine which could do a phrenological
reading complete with printout. It is said
that this device netted its owners about
$200,000 at the 1934 Century of Progress
Exposition in Chicago.
Anthropometry
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, used mainly to classify
potential criminals by facial characteristics.
Cesare Lombroso "Criminal Anthropology" 1895,
associated certain craniofacial features to criminal types.
(e.g., murderers have prominent jaws, and that
pickpockets have long hands and scanty beards).
Popular among the police and judicial systems in Italy and
in many other countries.
Well until the 30s, many judges ordered "lombrosian"
anthropometric analyses of defendants in criminal charges,
which were used against them by the prosecution in the
trial procedures.
Craniology
Influential during the Victorian era,
Used by the British to justify racism
and dominance of "inferior people",
such as the Irish and the black tribes
of Africa.
"Inferior" races were said to be
similar to apes and monkeys, so that
they were considered to be more kin
to these animals than the main
European people (such as the AngloSaxon, of course...).
Jonh Beddoe, the founder and president of the
British Anthropological Institute, The Races of
Man" (1862), developed "Index of Nigressence",
stated that the Irish had crania similar to those
of the Cro-Magnon pre-historic men and thus
were a kind of "Africanoid" white race !
High Brow/Low Brow
National Hygiene Department in the Ministry of the
Interior and in the Bureau for Enlightenment on
Population Policy and Racial Welfare, proposed the
"scientific" classification of Arians and non-Arians
Official craniometric certification required by law
“Many persons were sent to the death camps or denied
marriage or work as a result of this "mismeasurement“.
Stephen Jay Gould
Localization of Function
As it turns out, Gall and the phrenologists were
correct when it came to the central debate of
neurology of the time.
The brain is compartmentalized, with each piece
serving a specific function modern map is based on
fundamental functions, such as Broca’s and
Werinike’s Areas.
Phineas P. Gage
Video