As part of a psychology TDT we were asked to create a timeline of brain development. I felt that this was very interesting; to see what people used to think about the brain compared to now.

• 4000 B.C.- Sumerian records show first writing on the brain
• 450 B.C. – Alcmaeon was a Greek physician. He used anatomic dissection of animals as a basis for his theories. He believes from his studies that the brain is the central organ of sensation and thought. This idea contradicts a lifetime theory that see’s the heart as the true seat of intelligence.
• 335 B.C- Aristotle believes that the heart is the main organ for sensation and thought and the brain is a radiator which is there to cool it. Aristotle believes that the organ of thought and basis for thought are not the same. He claims that the basis for thought, is what he calls the rational soul, this is immaterial and can’t be found anywhere within the body. Aristotle’s theories about memory are proven to be more successful. He surmises that the processes involved in short term memory are different from those involved in long-term memory.
• 1664- Thomas Willis was an Oxford Professor he wrote the first monograph on brain autonomy and physiology. In his book, he states that the cerebral hemispheres – which makes up 70% of the human brain – determines thought and action and this is separate from the part of the brain that controls basic motor functions e.g walking. Willis’ work was crucial in encouraging future neuroscientists to study the functional contributions of individual brain parts.
• 1848- Phineas Gage was a railroad worker; he was involved in an accident at work when an explosion caused an iron rod to pierce the frontal lobe of his brain. He recovered from this accident however suffered from mood and behaviour changes. Accounts showed that Gage was a quite worker before the accident however became irritable and could not hold a job down. This was accident was a milestone in brain study as it showed a link between the frontal lobe and personality. These findings lead to the development of lobotomy. This was based on the theory that removing portions of the frontal lobe could cure mental derangement and depression.
• 1869- Francis Galton claimed that intelligence was an inherited trait and high levels of intelligence was linked to a person’s genes. He made the first attempt to measure intelligence. In 1888, he sets up an “anthropometric laboratory” he used measures of visual acuity, auditory accuracy, and breathing capacity to assess levels of intelligence.
• 1875 Wihelm Wundt set up the first lab devoted to study of behaviour. He was deeply interested in philosophy as well as psychology. He studied attention and sensory process.
• 1905- Alfred Binet was a French psychologist. He disagreed with Galtons use of sensory discrimination to explain intelligence. Binet believed that individual differences in intelligence can be detected only through measures of complex processes such as memory, imagination, attention and comprehension. Binet aimed to develop a scale that could differentiate children who are slow learners from children who are learning at a normal rate. The result as a scale made to measure a variety of mental processes such as memory and imagination. In 1905, Binet and Simon introduced their intelligence scale and provide guidelines for its administration. They stressed that the scale was only appropriate for assessing if a child is of normal or inferior intelligence and is not designed to uncover the psychologically unstable or insane.
• 1929: Hans Berger demonstrated the first human electroencephalograph (EEG). This was used to measure and record the electrical activity of the brain. Berger’s invention was fundamental in brain development as this is now used routinely as a diagnostic test in neurology and psychiatry and as a common tool in brain research.
• 1950: Karl Spencer Lashley was an America neuropsychologist who conducted an experiment which aimed to uncover neural components of memory which he named engrams. He worked with rats in order to see where their memory was situated. During one experiment, he systematically removed different percentages of rats’ brains and then tested them in mazes that they had ran before. The result of this was a gradual, but consistent, decline in their ability to remember the twists and turns of the maze. From Lashley’s findings he conclued that there is no particular area for memory in the brain, but that it is a holistic process made up of many neural connections.
• 1953: Nathaniel Kleitman and Eugene Aserinsky were doing research on children’s sleeping patterns when they discovered Rapid Eye Movement Sleep. Prior to this it was believed that the brain was inactive when a person was asleep. However when using the EEG record the brain activity of someone sleeping they found that the electrical pattern was similar to someone who was awake. However the electrical waves between periods of REM sleep were slow this suggested the brain was at rest. Researchers now believe that people experience two kinds of sleep, orthodox and paradoxical. These change throughout the night in breaks of about 100 minutes. Orthodox sleep occurs 80% of the night and there is no rapid eye movement. Paradoxical sleep (known as REM sleep) makes up the rest of the time and involves bodily movement as well as rapid eye movement. Newborns spend more than 20% of their sleep in the REM phase, this suggests to researchers that this part of sleep involves some sort of learning process.
• 1974: M.E.Phelps, E.J.Hoffman and M.M.Ter Pogossian created the first Positron Emission Topography (PET) scanner. This is a machine that gives visual information about the brains activity. A patient that undergoes a PET scan is administered a substance which includes radioactive atoms that give out positively charged particles known as positrons. The gamma radiation that results from this process is sensed by detectors and converted into computer-generated images of the brain. Doctors use PET scans to monitor such things as blood flow and oxygen utilization in the brain.
• 1987: Prozac is introduced to and becomes a treatment for depression. Prozac works by enhancing the effects of the chemical neurotransmitter, serotonin. Serotonin creates a sense of well-being. People who suffer from depression suffer from low levels of serotonin. Prozac alters the brain chemistry of depressed people by allowing more serotonin to remain in their brains.
• 1990: The US president George Bush declares this the “decade of the brain”.
• 2000 : Arvid Carlsson, Paul Greengard and Eric Kandel share the Nobel Prize for their discoveries concerning signal transduction in the nervous system
• 2014 – John O’Keefe, Edvard Moser, and May-Britt Moser share the Nobel Prize for their discoveries about cells that constitute a positioning system in the brain