Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Pietrini, Pietro
• Furey, Maura L
• Guazzelli, Mario

Titel

In vivo biochemistry of the brain in understanding human cognition and emotions: towards a molecular psychology

Ist Teil von

• Brain research bulletin, 1999-11, Vol.50 (5), p.417-418

Ort / Verlag

United States: Elsevier Inc

Erscheinungsjahr

1999

Quelle

Access via ScienceDirect (Elsevier)

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Since the ancient ages, philosophers and scientists have been fascinated by the mysteries of human cognition, emotions and behavior. That the ancient Chinese medical doctrine indicated that emotions originated in the heart, liver, lungs, and kidneys, certainly is not surprising given that emotional arousal produces many more sensations from our heart or stomach than from our brain, as still reflected in everyday expressions like "breaking someone's heart". The Greek philosophers were probably the first to attribute various mental functions to the brain. In the first century B.C., Hippocrates already understood that cerebral hemispheres control the functioning of the contralateral hemibody. Over the centuries, the development of anatomical dissection techniques and the descriptions of the behavioral and cognitive changes that resulted from brain injuries or disease led to more elaborate theories that linked mental functions to specific brain regions. However, a relatively small conceptual gap separates the first ancient localizations of mental functions to the cerebral ventricles from the more detailed phrenological maps developed in the beginning of the XIX century. It was only in the early 1920s, with the first recording of the bioelectrical activity from the brain of a human subject, that the in vivo functional exploration of human brain activity began and a new era for the study of brain function was born. The development of electroencephalography (EEG) represented a true revolutionary approach in neurophysiology and clinical neurology, especially for the diagnosis of epilepsy and brain tumors.