Brain, Vision, Memory: Tales in the History of Neuroscience

These tales describe the growth of knowledge about the brain from the early Egyptians and Greeks to the present time. The author attempts to answer the question of how the discipline of neuroscience evolved into its modern incarnation through the twists and turns of history.

The first essay tells the story of the visual cortex, from the first written mention of the brain by the Egyptians to the modern work of Hubel and Wiesel. The second essay focuses on Leonardo Da Vinci’s anatomical work on the brain and the eye. The third essay derives from the question of whether there can be a solely theoretical biology or biologist, highlighting the work of Emanuel Swedenborg, the 18th-century Swedish mystic. The fourth essay entails a mystery - how did the largely ignored brain structure called the hippocampus minor come to be, and why was it so important in the controversies that swirled about Darwin’s theories? The final essay describes the discovery of the visual functions of the temporal and parietal lobes.