EXAM 2 SCIENTISTS PSYCH

Alcmaeon of Croton

• early dissection experiments

• experiments with vision in animals

• established a connection between the brain and sense organs

• first scientist to establish that the brain was the seat of the mind

Plato

• believed the brain was the mind

• argued against science in general

• believed in reason over observation and experimentation

Hippocrates

• diseases were due to natural causes

• attempted to separate medicine and religion

• also believed the brain was the mind

Aristotle 

• believed the mind was in the heart 

• brain was a radiator for the rest of the body 

• dense capillaries carry the warm blood to the brain to disperse heat 

Herophilos

• distinguished between the cerebrum and cerebellum 

• believed that nerves originated in the brain and traced their pathways to the sensory and muscle organs

• first to distinguish between sensory and motor nerves

Erasistratus

• believed that the number of convolutions in the brain was correlated with intelligence

• psychic pneuma entered the brain through hollow sensory nerves 

Galen

• performed dissections of the brains and experiments on pigs and primates

• promoted humoral theory

• mental diseases could be attributed to the obstruction of pneuma by one of the four humors

Vesalius

• founder of modern human anatomy

• accepted pneumatic theory but thought the study of anatomy would never be able to explain the mind

Descartes

• age of enlightenment

• proposed that nerves contain “animal spirits” responsible for flow of sensory and motor info in the body

Charles Darwin

• principles of natural selection 

Albrecht von Haller

• Swiss anatomist and physiologist

• distinguished grey and white matter of the nervous system

• grey matter = inexcitable

• white matter = highly irritable

Franz Joseph Gall 

• established phrenology: study of the shape and size of the head as an indication of personality and mental abilities 

• relative size of each organ is associated with the strength of it 

Pierre Flourens

• verified Gall’s claim by using rabbits and pigeons, and stimulation of the brain in animals and humans

• concluded that there was no localization of function in the brain, and that the brain acts as one unit to control behavior

Jean Baptiste Bouillaud

• revived some of Gall’s anatomical theories

• localized high intellectual faculties to the frontal lobes

• argued that the brain did not act as a single unit