20th Century –

1900 – Sigmund Freud

The interpretation of dreams – dreams are the unconscious mind where repressed                   wishes are played out. His theory is that the unconscious mind drives most of human behaviour even though society dictated that you must override such impulses with reason. There is tension created between the repressed drives and the expected social conventions and this tension is relived through dreams.

1906 – Santiago Ramón y Cajel

Research into the changes neurons undergo during the functioning of the nervous system won him a Nobel Prize.

1911 – Henry Head

Publishes Studies in Neurology where he disputes the theories regarding aphasia and argues that the function of speech is not localised.

1921 – Hermann Rorschach

Development of the ink blot test. The test gives useful clues to the patients ‘psyches’. Used to evaluate personality traits and disorders.

1929 – Hans Berger

EEG was invented.

1932 – Lord Edgar Adrian and Sir Charles Sherrington

Nobel prize won for research into neuron function specifically the mechanisms by which nerves transmit messages.

1934 – Egas Moniz

Research done into operation on the brain which cured depression as well as causing many other personality changes, similar to Phineas Gage’s “accidental leucotomy”

1936 – Walter Freeman and James W. Watts

First lobotomy performed in U.S.

1938 – Albert Hofmann

Research into ergot fungus containing natural hallucinating properties resulting in the production of LSD.

1949 – Walter Rudolph Hess

Nobel prize won for research into the interbrain being responsible for coordinating the body’s internal organs.

1950 – Karl Spencer Lashley

Experiment designed to look into the neural components of memory involving rats in mazes.

1953 – Nathaniel Klkeitman and Eugene Aserinsky

Development of Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep.

1963 – John Carew Eccles, Alan Lloyd Hodgkin and Andrew Fielding Huxly

Nobel prize for work on the mechanisms of neuron cell membranes.

1967 – Ragnar Granit, Haldan Keffer Hartline and George Wald

Research into how the eye passes images to the brain.

1970 – Julius Axelrod, Ulf von Euler and Sir Bernard Katz

Discoveries concerning storage, release and inactivation of neurotransmitters and how psychoactive drugs affect this.

1974 – M.E.Phelps, E.J.Hoffman and M.M.Ter Pogossian

Development of the first PET scanner which looks at the activity of the brain from a visual prospective.

1981 – Torsten Wiesel and David Hubel

Research on visual information send from retina to brain.

1990 – George Bush

Declares the decade starting in 1990 the “Decade of the Brain”

1997 – Stanley b. Prusiner

Research into prions as infectious agents in the brain which cause several diseases such a dementia.

2000 – Arvid Carlsson, Paul Greengard and Eric Kandel

Research into chemical transmitters and synapses.