Abstract
The story of what the human brain thought of itself over the millennia would be a very interesting read. From the days when men were not even certain about the status of the brain as the seat of mind and intelligence, to the present times of gene therapies and deep brain stimulation, brain science has come a long way. Like any other science history, history of the brain is a history of errors in our ideas about the brain. A study of historical questions in this science, followed by an account of some of the questions answered (or remain unanswered, like the vexing question of “consciousness”) in contemporary thinking, helps us arrive at a balanced and realistic perspective of contemporary knowledge in neuroscience.
My hand moves because certain forces—electric, magnetic, or whatever ‘nerve-force’ may prove to be—are impressed on it by my brain. This nerve-force, stored in the brain, would probably be traceable, if Science were complete, to chemical forces supplied to the brain by the blood, and ultimately derived from the food I eat and the air I breathe.
—Lewis Carroll (1832–1898), from Sylvie and Bruno, 1890.
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Notes
- 1.
This form of learning, in which the involuntary response (salivation) of an animal to stimulus is studied, is known as classical conditioning. There is a very different class of conditioning known as instrumental conditioning, in which the animal produces a voluntary response.
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Chakravarthy, V.S. (2019). Brain Ideas Through the Centuries. In: Demystifying the Brain. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3320-0_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3320-0_1
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