文档介绍：Brain, Vision, Memory
Charles G. Gross
"Gross's tales of the history of neuroscience can be warmly mended to
all students of the brain, but especially to those who believe that history
began when they were undergraduates. Informative and amusing in equal
part, Gross is as fair to those who were wildly wrong as to those who were
(relatively) right. . . . Never less than fascinating."
John C. Marshall, Nature
Charles G. Gross is an experimental neuroscientist who
specializes in brain mechanisms in vision. He is also fascinated
by the history of his field. In these engaging tales describing the
growth of knowledge about the brain -- from the early
Egyptians and Greeks to the Dark Ages and the Renaissance to
the present time -- he attempts to answer the question of how
the discipline of neuroscience evolved into its modern
incarnation through the twists and turns of history.
Introduction
I am an experimental neuroscientist specializing in brain mechanisms in vision,
and a teacher of neuroscience. This introduction explains what led me tempo-
rarily to put aside my experiments and neglect my students to write the ªve
tales on the history of neuroscience.
The ªrst essay began in 1960. I had pleted the experimental work
for my . thesis, “Some Alterations in Behavior after Frontal Lesions in
Monkeys,” at Cambridge University and sat down to write the requisite review
of the literature. Six months later I had reached Galen and the second century.
At that point, my advisor, Larry Weiskrantz, suggested that, actually, it might
be better if I got on with the write-up of my experiments, even though, as I
explained to him, Galen had carried out experiments on frontal lobe damage
in piglets. So I never included this historical survey in my thesis, and ultimately
its review of previous work began with studies in the 1930s.
I did show my “up to Galen” manuscript to Joseph Needham. He wrote
me an encouraging note, res