Plastic Maps: The New Brain Cartographies of the 21th-Century Neurosciences
From Phrenological Heads to Connectomics
In: NunciusSearch for other papers by Carmela Morabito in
Current site
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Ever since the phrenological heads of the early 19th century, maps have translated into images our ideas, theories and models of the brain, making this organ at one and the same time scientific object and representation. Brain maps have always served as gateways for navigating and visualizing neuroscientific knowledge, and over time many different maps have been produced – firstly as tools to “read” and analyse the cerebral territory, then as instruments to produce new models of the brain. Over the last 150 years brain cartography has evolved from a way of identifying brain regions and localizing them for clinical use to an anatomical framework onto which information about local properties and functions can be integrated to provide a view of the brain’s structural and functional architecture. In this paper a historical and epistemological consideration of the topic is offered as a contribution to the understanding of contemporary brain mapping, based on the assumption that the brain continuously rewires itself in relation to individual experience.
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1
Ludwik Fleck, “To Look, to See, to Know,” in Cognition and Fact, edited by Robert S. Cohen, Thomas Schnelle (Dordrecht: Springer, 1986), pp. 129–151.
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Bradley R. Postle, Essentials of Cognitive Neuroscience (Oxford: John Wiley & Sons, 2015).
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3
Anne Beaulieu, “From Brainbank to Database: The Informational Turn in the Study of the Brain,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 2004, 35:367–390.
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5
Robert L. Savoy, “History and Future Directions of Human Brain Mapping and Functional Neuroimaging,” Acta Psychologica, 2001, 107/1–3:9–42.
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Roger Cooter, The Cultural Meaning of Popular Science: Phrenology and the Organization of Consent in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984); Roger Cooter (ed.), Phrenology in Europe and America (London: Routledge/Thoemmes Press, 2001).
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7
Carmela Morabito, “The Cortical Localization of Language and the ‘Birth’ of the Cognitive Neurosciences,” Rivista Internazionale di Filosofia e Psicologia, 2013, 4/2:143–160.
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Jean-Baptiste Bouillaud, “Recherches cliniques propres à démontrer que la perte de la parole correspond à la lésion des lobules antérieurs du cerveau, et à confirmer l’ opinion de M. Gall, sur le siège de l’ organe du langage articulé,” Archives Générales de Médecine, 1825, 3/8:25–45; Marc Dax, “Lésions de la moitié gauche de l’ encéphale coïncident avec l’ oubli des signes de la pensée,” Gazette hebdomadaire de médecine et de chirurgie, 1865, 2:254–260; Paul M. Broca, “Remarques sur le siège de la faculté du langage articulé, suivies d’ une observation d’ aphémie,” Bulletins de la Société d’ Anthropologie, 1861, 6:330–357; Carl Wernicke, Der aphasische Symptomencomplex: eine psychologische Studie auf anatomischer Basis (Breslau: Cohn & Weigert, 1874). For a comprehensive review of 19th-century theories the localization of brain functions, see Timo Kaitaro, “Biological and Epistemological Models of Localization in the Nineteenth Century: From Gall to Charcot,” Journal of the History of the Neurosciences, 2010, 10/3:262–276.
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Paul M. Broca, “Nouvelle observation d’ aphémie produite per une lesion de la moitié postérieur des deuxiéme et troisiéme circonvolutions frontales,” Bulletin de la Societé Anatomique de Paris, 1861, 36:398–407.
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Stanley Finger, “The Birth of Localization Theory,” in History of Neurology, edited by Stanley Finger, Francis Boller, Kenneth L. Tyler (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2010), pp. 117–128; Carmela Morabito, “David Ferrier’s Experimental Localization of Cerebral Functions and the Anti-Vivisection Debate,” Nuncius, 2017, 32/1:146–165.
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Wilder Penfield, Theodore Rasmussen, The Cerebral Cortex of Man (New York: Macmillan & Company, 1950).
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Vernon B. Mountcastle, “Modality and Topographic Properties of Single Neurons of Cat’s Somatic Sensory Cortex,” Journal of Neurophysiology, 1957, 20/4:408–434.
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Donald O. Hebb, The Organization of Behavior: A Neurophysiological Theory (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1949).
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Siegrid Löwel, Wolf Singer, “Selection of Intrinsic Horizontal Connections in the Visual Cortex by Correlated Neuronal Activity,” Science, 1992, 255:209–212, p. 211. Löwel and Singer encapsulated and popularized by this phrase the well known “Hebbian rules of activity-dependent synaptic plasticity.”
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Eric R. Kandel, In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind (New York-London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006).
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Patrick Bateson, Peter Gluckman, Plasticity, Robustness, Development and Evolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).
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William James, The Principles of Psychology (New York: Henry Holt & Company, 1890), Vol. 1, p. 105.
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David H. Hubel, Torsten N. Wiesel, “Effects of Visual Deprivation on Morphology and Physiology of Cells in the Cat’s Lateral Geniculate Body,” Journal of Neurophysiology, 1963, 26:978–993; David H. Hubel, Torsten N. Wiesel, “Extent of Recovery from the Effects of Visual Deprivation in Kittens,” Journal of Neurophysiology, 1965, 28:1060–1072.
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Michael Merzenich, William M. Jenkins, “Cortical Plasticity, Learning, and Learning Dysfunction,” in Maturational Windows and Adult Cortical Plasticity, edited by Bela Julesz, Ilona Kovacs (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1995), pp. 247–271. Today we know that malleability occurs throughout one’s life (the most common expression of plasticity in adults – as we said – is seen in their behavior, particularly in perceptual learning, e.g., when the brains of blind people reorganise themselves in response to their particular experience of the outside world).
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30
Russell Meares, The Metaphor of Play: Origin and Breakdown of Personal Being (London: Routledge, 2005).
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Nikolai A. Bernstein, On the Co-ordination and Regulation of Movements (New York: Pergamon, 1967), p. 62.
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32
Ibid., p. 222.
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33
Edward S. Reed, Blandine Bril, “The Primacy of Action in Development. A Commentary of Nikolai Bernstein,” in Dexterity and its Development, edited by Mark L. Latash, Michael T. Turvey (Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum and Associates, 1996), pp. 431–451: 431.
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Gerald M. Edelman, Giulio Tononi, A Universe of Consciousness. How Matter becomes Imagination (New York: Basic Books, 2000), pp. 41–42.
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Claude Debru, “Metafore del cervello,” in Metafore del vivente. Linguaggi e ricerca scientifica tra filosofia, bios e psiche, edited by Elena Gagliasso and Giulia Frezza (Milano: Franco Angeli, 2010), pp. 241–247.
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39
Larry W. Swanson, Jeff W. Lichtman, “From Cajal to Connectome and Beyond,” Annual Review of Neuroscience, 2016, 39:197–216, p. 198.
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40
Michael Merzenich, Soft-Wired: How the New Science of Brain Plasticity Can Change Your Life (San Francisco: Parnassus, 2013), p. 12.
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43
Santiago Ramon y Cajal, Manual de histología normal y técnica micrografica (Madrid: Libreria de Pascual Aguilar, 1893); Santiago Ramon y Cajal, Histologie du système nerveux (Paris: A. Maloine, 1911).
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46
Francis Crick, Edward Jones, “Backwardness of Human Neuroanatomy,” Nature, 1993, 361:109–110, p. 110.
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57
Ibid., p. 19.
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60
Josh L. Morgan, Jeff W. Lichtman, “Why not Connectomics?” Nature Methods, 2013, 10/6:494–500, p. 497.
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61
Maxwell R. Bennett, Peter M.S. Hacker, Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003).
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62
Daniel J. Siegel, The Developing Mind: Toward a Neurobiology of Interpersonal Experience (New York: Guilford Press, 1999).
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64
Hans-Joerg Rheinberger, Toward a History of Epistemic Things: Synthesizing Proteins in the Test Tube (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997).
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66
Ibid., p. 140.
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67
Ibid., p. 144.
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69
Anne Beaulieu, “Brains, Maps and the New Territory of Psychology,” Theory & Psychology, 2003, 13:561–568, p. 563.
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Plastic Maps: The New Brain Cartographies of the 21th-Century Neurosciences
From Phrenological Heads to Connectomics
In: NunciusSearch for other papers by Carmela Morabito in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Ever since the phrenological heads of the early 19th century, maps have translated into images our ideas, theories and models of the brain, making this organ at one and the same time scientific object and representation. Brain maps have always served as gateways for navigating and visualizing neuroscientific knowledge, and over time many different maps have been produced – firstly as tools to “read” and analyse the cerebral territory, then as instruments to produce new models of the brain. Over the last 150 years brain cartography has evolved from a way of identifying brain regions and localizing them for clinical use to an anatomical framework onto which information about local properties and functions can be integrated to provide a view of the brain’s structural and functional architecture. In this paper a historical and epistemological consideration of the topic is offered as a contribution to the understanding of contemporary brain mapping, based on the assumption that the brain continuously rewires itself in relation to individual experience.
| All Time | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 561 | 169 | 13 |
| Full Text Views | 214 | 6 | 0 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 50 | 11 | 0 |