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Image Source:  Wickens, Andrew P. “Five Depictions of the Brain.” Figure 1

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The Earliest Recorded Depiction of the Brain

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The Earliest Recorded Depiction of the Brain

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Wondering where we got the first images of our brains that allowed us the curiosity and ability to study the brain has led to Ancient Egypt where mummification of humans and other studies of health first began.

The first depictions of the brain are believed to appear around 300 B.C. in Alexandria, Egypt, which was the only place that was doing anatomic dissections at the time. Ptolemy was the ruler at the time and presumably the one who permitted these early autopsy practices for study¹.

One of the researchers of the time was Herophilus, who had discovered what the nervous system was and looked like throughout the body¹. Another researcher of the time was Erasistratus, who compared the lining of the brain to the lining of the intestines. This led to him thinking that they correlated with intelligence upon comparing the human parts to that of animals¹.

Source

(1) Wickens, Andrew P. “Five Depictions of the Brain.” BPS, The British Psychological Society, 3 Mar. 2017, www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/five-depictions-brain.

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Section of Brain in dissected Skull, from Mondino Dei Luzzi's Anatomia Mundini, Ad Vetustis, 1541 Source 1

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Modino de Luzzi was an anatomist who lived from 1270 – 1326 in Florence Italy¹. He is most well known for his brain discoveries of "common sense and his drawings of such in his book Anathomia (1316)².

Modino de Luzzi followed Galenic teachings which were that "the brain is the 'hegemonic', the principal organ which rules and controls all the functions and the activities of the human body⁴." However, he also introduced the idea of spiritus animalis, and its relative "flow" being controlled by the choroid plexus³. This contrasts slightly his origional thinking that spirituality living in the middle section of the body around the heart and lungs¹.

Sources

(1) “Mondino de Luzzi.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 20 Oct. 2023, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondino_de_Luzzi.

(2)“A History of the Brain.” Untitled Document, Stanford University, web.stanford.edu/class/history13/earlysciencelab/body/brainpages/brain.html. Accessed 5 Mar. 2024.

(3) Duque-Parra, Jorge Eduardo, et al. “A Historical Approach to the Ventricular System of the Brain.” Revista de La Facultad de Medicina, 1 Jan. 1970, www.redalyc.org/journal/5763/576364413015/html/.

(4) Baloyannis SJ (2016) Surgical Outcome of Ulnar Nerve Lesions: Not Always Disappointing. J Neurol Stroke 4(1): 00116. DOI: 10.15406/jnsk.2016.04.00116

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Leonardo da Vinci's depiction of brain cavities from Cambiaghi, Marco, and Heidi Hausse. “American Academy of Neurology Journals.”, figure 2

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Leonardo's Big Discovery in Brain Depiction

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Leonardo's Big Discovery in Brain Depiction

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Leonardo da Vinci's greatest contribution was between 1508–1513, as he was able to get a cast model of the ventricles of the brain by injecting it with wax to harden/preserve its intricacies¹.

Due to his technique of hardening the brain, it made it easier to gather more anatomically correct “Renaissance brain imaging².” This also allowed da Vinci to conclude that mental cognition and memories were not occurring in the ventricles².

Sources:

(1) Wickens, Andrew P. “Five Depictions of the Brain.” BPS, The British Psychological Society, 3 Mar. 2017, www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/five-depictions-brain.

(2)Cambiaghi, Marco, and Heidi Hausse. “American Academy of Neurology Journals.” Neurology, American Academy of Neurology, 15 Oct. 2019, www.neurology.org/doi/full/10.1212/WNL.0b013e3181dad651.

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Christopher Wren's base drawing of the brain Figure 4 in  Wickens, Andrew P. “Five Depictions of the Brain.”

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Thomas Willis was permitted to start what could have been recognized as the first team to do interdisciplinary neuroscientific research studies¹. Of this team was Christopher Wren, an artist of the time, who was most important for the renderings depicted above. Not only this though his team also had Robert Boyle who had come up with techniques allowing brain hardening with alcohol, and Richard Lower who was the "doctor" and did many of the teams' dissections¹.

In 1664 Willis and Wren were the first to get a three-dimensional visual rendering of the human brain as depicted above². Their renderings allowed Western Europe to re-shift their focus on ventricles and back onto the brain as an entity of its own².

Sources

(1) Wickens, Andrew P. “Five Depictions of the Brain.” BPS, The British Psychological Society, 3 Mar. 2017, www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/five-depictions-brain.

(2) Guetter, Maria. “VISUALIZING THE BRAIN: EARLY IMAGING.” Simons Center for Geometry and Physics, 26 Feb. 2018, scgp.stonybrook.edu/archives/24933.

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Andreas Vesalius. De Humani Corporis Fabrica, 1543 Figure from Source 3

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Andreas Vesalius can be described as someone who pushed and challenged the boundaries of his time. He is known for having challenged Galen thinking of the brain as well as for his public demonstrations of autopsy¹.

Vesalius did the majority of his studies in Padua, Italy, he moved there after recognizing that his home was "stuck" in its Galenic ways of thinking². From here he was offered a teaching position at a university¹, and thus his public demonstrations of brain autopsy began².

The public autopsies were a very large attraction for those who wanted to learn, colleagues, students, and onlookers alike. There are even documented depictions of such events as seen in the figure in source 2 of The Fabrica Frontispiece, by Andreas Vesalius, 1543.

Sources

(1) Wickens, Andrew P. “Five Depictions of the Brain.” BPS, The British Psychological Society, 3 Mar. 2017, www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/five-depictions-brain.

(2) Guetter, Maria. “VISUALIZING THE BRAIN: EARLY IMAGING.” Simons Center for Geometry and Physics, 26 Feb. 2018, scgp.stonybrook.edu/archives/24933.

(3)Vesalius, Andreas. De Humani Corporis Fabrica. Dec. 2009. Research Gate, https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Amy-Ione/publication/38069638/figure/fig2/AS:627113115791364@1526526826979/Andreas-Vesalius-De-Humani-Corporis-Fabrica-1543-The-dura-is-shown-in-many-of-the.png. Accessed 5 Mar. 2024.

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"A chronology of major events associated with the development of human brain imaging with PET and fMRI." Figure 1 from Source 1; Raichle, Marcus E. “A Brief History of Human Brain Mapping: Trends in Neurosciences.” 

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The curiosity of understanding the brain, its functions, and what it looks like led to the first modern imaging in the late 1800s¹. As one could imagine without modern imaging there was no way for scientific discovery to truly grasp and understand what the brain may look like and how it functions.

Angelo Mosso is credited with creating what was deemed to be the first neuroimaging machine that did a "non-invasive measure of the redistribution of blood during intellectual and emotional activities.²" In doing this the machine would tip one way or another, and he concluded that the brain gains more blood flow the more challenging the task in 1978¹.

Walter Dandy was the first to use an X-ray in 1918 by replacing cerebral spinal fluid and injecting air which was called pneumoencephalography².

Cerebral angiography came next by Egas Moniz who reportedly was the first to get a radiographic image of a living person¹. To do this he took injected the bloodstream with radioactive dyes and then took X-rays which created images of the brain¹.

These paved the way for the modern EEG, PET, MRI, and fMRI techniques we use today to gather images of the brain and its functioning. These modern techniques have created many different ways of diagnosis and treatment of ailments. They have also allowed for more descriptive and harmless depictions of the brain to be taken for research & scientific as well as education purposes.

Sources

(1) Raichle, Marcus E. “A Brief History of Human Brain Mapping: Trends in Neurosciences.” 50 Trends in Neuroscience, Cell Press, 24 Dec. 2008, www.cell.com/trends/neurosciences/fulltext/S0166-2236(08)00265-8.

(2) Guy-Evans, Olivia. “Neuroimaging: Brain Scanning Techniques in Psychology.” Edited by Saul McLeod, Simply Psychology, 19 Sept. 2023, www.simplypsychology.org/neuroimaging.html.

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Image of Santiago Ramón y Cajal from Source 1, Santiago Ramón y Cajal – Biographical

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The docent of this exhibit would be Santiago Ramón y Cajal. Cajal was a man of many medical trades including an army doctor, professor, anatomist, and researcher¹. He is most well known for his detailed and also first drawings of the modern neurons².

Cajal pondered upon neurons while preparing for a competitive professorship while studying in a lab microbiology². In 1888 he stated that axons communicate through contiguity in 1890 he coined the mobile area of an axon that grows the axonal growth cone, in 1891 he released his theory of nerve cell individuality².

Cajal's work led the way for thinking and developing neurons, or neuro-cells. Although they were single units as he had thought, they did not have a single function². However, this is what paved the way for further dissemination of neuronal discovery and brain function understanding.

Sources

(1) Santiago Ramón y Cajal – Biographical. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2024. Tue. 5 Mar 2024. <https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/1906/cajal/biographical/>

(2)Nemri, Abdellatif. “Santiago Ramón y Cajal.” Scholarpedia, www.scholarpedia.org/article/Santiago_Ram%C3%B3n_y_Cajal. Accessed 5 Mar. 2024.