1700
TO
1800

1705

Antonio Pacchioni describes arachnoid granulations.

1774

Franz Anton Mesmer introduces "animal magnetism" or  “mesmerism”(today called hypnosis).

1776

Michele Vicenzo Giancinto Malacarne makes the first publication that deals solely with the cerebellum.

ca. 1785

Luigi Galvani shows that electrical stimulation of frog nerves produces muscular contractions, believing an “electric fluid” secreted by the brain provides stimulus to muscle fibres.

1800
TO
1900

1808

Franz Joseph Gall publishes his work on phrenology.

1809

Luigi Rolando states the brain is not without form and uses galvanic current to stimulate the cortex.

1811

Julien Jean Legallois discovers the respiratory centre in the medulla.

1823

Marie-Jean-Pierre Flourens states that the cerebellum regulates voluntary motor activity.

1825

Jean-Baptiste Bouillaud offers 500 francs to anyone who can show him a lesion to the frontal lobe of the brain without some deficit of speech.

1853

William Benjamin Carpenter proposes the "sensory ganglion" (thalamus) as the seat of consciousness.

1855

Bartolomeo Panizza demonstrates experimentally that the occipital lobe is essential for vision.

ca. 1860

Eduard Hitzig stimulates the exposed brains of injured soldiers with weak electric shocks, discovering that applications to areas at the back of the brain could cause the patient's eyes to move.

1861

Paul Broca describes cortical localization.

1863

Ivan Sechenov publishes Reflexes of the Brain.

1869

Francis Galton claims that intelligence is heredity.

1870

Eduard Hitzig and Gustav Fritsch discover cortical motor areas of dogs using electrical stimulation of live dog brains.

Camillo Golgi establishes that neurons in the brain send information to the motor nerves and information from sensory nerves is sent to the brain for analysis.

1875

Richard Caton is the first to record electrical activity of the brain.

1876

David Ferrier publishes "The Functions of the Brain".

1883

Emil Kraepeline presents his classification of mental disorders in his Compendium der Psychiatrie, describing schizophrenia and manic depression.

1885

Paul Ehrlich finds that intravenous dye does not stain brain tissue. 

1887

Sergei Korsakoff describes mental symptoms characteristic in alcoholics (“Korsakov’s psychosis”).

1895

William His introduces the term “hypothalamus”.   

1898

Edward L. Thorndike invents the puzzle box to study operant conditioning in cats. The laboratory device contains a latch that could be opened by the animal, revealing food.