This paper reviews the early history of brain localization of function. It analyses the doctrines
professed in ancient times by philosophers and physicians, who believed that brain …

The localization of motor and sensory activities, the “rete mirabile” and the localization of the
mental processes–the seat of the soul–in the ventricles or “cells” of the brain were ancient …

The history of research of the epiphysis cerebri is a very long and venerable one. It is also of
considerable interest because, during a span of more than 20 centuries, it reflects the …

The early concept that the cerebral ventricles harbor the soul began to break down only in
the Renaissance. Thanks to determined anatomical studies and physiological …

This paper examines the anatomy and physiology, together with the pathophysiology, of the
ventricular system of the brain, as it was understood by arguably its greatest exponent in …

At the beginning of the eighteenth century, attempts to localize cerebral functions generated
a wide range of different ideas. Ancient theories and their revisions stood next to new …

Abstract During the Middle Ages it was widely believed that the various mental faculties—
sensation, cognition, memory, and so forth—were each located in a specific part of the three …

The debates about the mind and its higher functions, and attempts to locate them in the
body, have represented a subject of interest of innumerable sages since ancient times. The …

The other seminal publication in 1664 was the Cerebri Anatome of Thomas Willis, the Court
Physician who lived and worked in Oxford. Until that book, all the speculations about brain …

N ALL TOO MANY CASES medieval scientists were the heirs to problems in natural
philosophy that simply lay beyond their capacities for solution. Such is especially true of the …