Someone to Read!

Dr Joelle Abi Rached.

If you don't have her papers, get them.

Peer-Reviewed Articles

Abi-Rached, JM and Rose, N. (2010). The birth of the neuromolecular gaze. History of the Human Sciences (special issue on the brain sciences). 23(1) (In press)

Abi-Rached, JM. (Dec 2009) Post-war mental health, wealth and justice. Traumatology (special issue on History, Memory and Trauma). (In press).

Abi-Rached, JM and Dudai, Y (2009). The Implications of Memory Research and Memory-Erasing Pills: A Conversation with Yadin Dudai. BioSocieties. 4(1): 79-90.

Abi-Rached, JM (2008). The implications of the new brain sciences. EMBO reports. 9(12): 1158-1162.

History of Science Society Meeting

Phoenix, Arizona, 20 November

Theories of Mind, Brain, and Cognition in Social Engagement

•Giving Shape to the Common Brain: Cerebral Organization and Political Unity in the 18th Century, Nima Bassiri, University of California, Berkeley

•“Crazy, bedeviled, bewitched or something”: Concepts of Insanity in the United States, 1800-1843, Rachel Ponce, University of Chicago

•Nervous Societies and the Fragmented Self – Sigmund Freud and Biological Psychiatry, Katja Guenther, Princeton University

Three outstanding papers.

Dopamine

Ed Yong has a terrific post on dopamine.

Neurosurgery 800 years ago?

Derrin Brown has the scoop.

Étienne-Jules Marey and Chronophotography

Étienne-Jules Marey's chronophotography made possible a photographic science of motion. His book La Machine Animale was published in 1873. The images knit together in this short film also represent some of the earliest "film footage" ever created. The book is here.

Neurotrash?

For those critical of too much "neuro", check out Raymond Tallis' article in The New Humanist - a must read.

The Young and the Neuro

The Critical Response featured in The Neuro Times focusing on Fernando Vidal's work has received attention from regular readers. A few people have written and asked if there is any actual evidence for the demographic shift towards a growth in the number of young neuroscientists in the 1990s. David Brook's observations in the New York Times constitute slight empirical evidence.

Neurology in John Bull

The hillarious article below was published in John Bull in 1843. It is a wonderful satire that also illustrates the often forgotten origins of neurology. The parenthetical expressions in the quoted extract are comments made by the anonymous editor. When read aloud, this essay can still induce great laughter.



Animal Magnetism
Many of our readers may not be aware of the various new and learned names which have been invented for this wondering-making science. Neurology, Neurypnology, Mesmerism, Hypnotism and Pathetism, are those at present most in vogue. Wishing to ingratiate ourselves with the fair to whom the marvellous is ever attractive, we were induced to dip into the Phreno-Magnet, or Mirror of Nature, and qualify ourselves by knowledge of the subject, for imparting to them, some new lights on their favourite study – and, verily, we have succeeded beyond our utmost expectation. From a sly glance or two, which, like the ladies, we have had time to take in the mirror, we have had the satisfaction to learn that when we cry in our cups, or happen to see double, we are not maudlin drunk, but only in the pathetic, or suffering from the effects of Mesmerism. An amusing instance of this is given so naively by a correspondent in the tenth number of the Phreno-Magnet, who rejoice, in the cacophonous cagnomen of pot-chit, that we are tempted to transcribe an extract from the account he gives of his own case, and consign it to immortality in the pages of Bull: -

“After a sublime preludio on the dignity of the science and the glory attendant on those master spirits of the age, whether amongst professional philosophers –persons ennobled by a long line of titled ancestry (whom can he have in his eye here?) – or in the middle or lower walks of life (evidently alluding to his own industrious calling, mender of soles), who have been fortunate enough to make discoveries in pathetism, he exclaims – But enough: I must proceed to experiments in pathetism, in the conducting of which I have been fortunate enough to escape the effects termed “Mesmeric”, excepting on one occasion. The sensations I then experienced I will endeavour to convey to your readers, with their accompanying circumstances, as some of them appear novel in their character. Being at a friend’s house to tea, and the room well filled for the purpose of witnessing some experiments on persons whom I have frequently operated on, after producing numerous manifestations, with some good recitations, original speeches, etc., others of the party wished to know what effect it might have on them; so several were tried, with but little success beyond producing coma, occupying, from first to last, about four hours; and I would observe that from the first commencement I was not in what may be termed prime order, but felt dull and heavy, with less animation than usual, which might in part arise from the following causes: - First, being the lion of the evening, each one embraced every opportunity of asking some question on the subject, both prior to and during the time of taking tea, as well as afterwards; and lastly neglecting to take a little stimulating aliment previous to commencing, which is my usual custom, if the experiments are likely to continue a long time, generally imparting a confidence and self command (Dutch courage?) requisite on such occasions. Therefore, towards the close I felt rather fatigued and sleepy, but having to walk upwards of a mile in company with some of my family, it went off; yet, on reaching home, and taking a glass of ale, sleep became almost over-powering, and I retired to bed shortly afterwards, and felt nothing different until the time of rising in the morning, when the eyes were with difficulty opened, and everything appeared dim, indistinct, and doubled. I washed the head all over with cold water, as usual, after a night’s rest – still the dimness of sight, confusing of ideas, continued. After breakfast I tried to read, but could make little of it. When I found that on closing one of the eyes, no matter which, I could see clearly and distinctly with the other (a valuable discovery for persons under certain circumstances!) this was some satisfaction, as I began to be afraid of losing the sight, as an acquaintance of mine (a pot-companion of Mr. Potchet no doubt) had done a few years ago, equally sudden and unexpectedly. However, one eye required a focus (query pocus or poculum?) four or five inches shorter than before, and the other about as much longer than usual; hence the indistinctness when rising both together. The brain still continued confused, dull and heavy, like that of a man have been sitting up all night and partaking too freely of intoxicating liquors. In the evening the lamps in the streets appeared double (this has happened to ourselves once or twice), groups of four or five making eight or ten etc. In fact, each eye appeared to be rigidly fixed in a straightforward gaze – (how graphic we see Mr. Potchit in our mind’s eye) – and in order to discern any fresh object with either one or the other, it was necessary to move the whole head. They did not produce a squint, but appeared glazed and fixed with inflexible rigidity, and thus a miserable day was spent; yet the next morning all became right, the muscles of the eye and eyelids relaxed, and “Richard was himself again!”"

John Bull (London, England), Saturday, November 11, 1843; pg. 717; Issue 1,196

Neuroethics?

Is neuroethics a field? I would ask, "why should it be?" and "why can't I just call it ethics?"

Hat-tip a great blog titled "Neuroethics and International Biolaw".

Carl Sagan on the Brain

A classic. Observe the sets and artwork.

Reflections on Queen Square

Bloomsbury London has many charms. One can walk from the British museum through Russell Square Gardens and stand in amazement on sidewalks of High Woburn, sensing hints of a vibrant life beneath the rather drab, post-war façade of shops, restaurants, and cheap hotels now lining it and the adjacent streets. It is clear why Ronald Blythe emoted on the district in his Age of Illusion. Literati like E M Forester, T S Elliot, W H Auden, the Woolfs, and others from that part bohemian-bourgeois intellectual ‘group by invitation’ presented a rich fusion of celebrity and extant sources for his understandably romantic contemplation. Indeed this group created much of the Bloomsbury atmosphere still resonating there today.

One prominent neighborhood contributing to Bloomsbury’s past vitality (although modestly so) is a small bronze-fenced garden just off Lambs Court Row, called Queen Square. This square and its surrounding buildings housed in the nineteenth century a moderately wealthy intellectual class who lived and sometimes worked in the multitude of humane institutions that sprang up there during this period. There William Morris’ workshop, the Art-Workers Guild, the Foundling Hospital, the Italian Hospital, the Homeopathic Hospital, and the College for Working Women and Men formed a community creating what Robert Louis Stevenson described slightly earlier as an area of London “sacred to humane and liberal arts”. Unlike the dreary gas-lit depictions of interwar London immortalized in, for instance, Graham Greene’s 1934 classic It’s a Battlefield, Queen Square was the place where a poet could pause to ponder morning sunshine, the coming spring, pigeons, and innocently note:

Four Hospitals
Standing there
Worlds of their own
In a quiet square.

Today the square is almost completely dominated by one hospital, now called The National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery but originally known when it was founded in 1859 as the National Hospital for Paralysis and Epilepsy. Overtime this hospital’s name has changed. In 1926, for example, it became the National Hospital for the Relief and Cure of Diseases of the Nervous System including Paralysis and Epilepsy. Not surprisingly such a protracted name was shortened frequently to the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases, and then euphemistically to either the National Hospital or simply Queen Square. To a physician in the interwar period, the latter would have said it all. Queen Square: the name could convey so many different meanings to so many different people, but for those few physicians who worked and trained there in the late nineteenth century through to the post-war era, it indicated a lifestyle and a habitus, a seemingly acquired set of appreciations and perceptions which were reproduced in each subsequent generation of physicians training and practicing in the wards and laboratories of that world centre for the study of nervous diseases.

New Appointments in 20th Century British Neurology

Another way of analyzing the specialization of neurology.