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Research
The Past
The Past
Throughout time and history,
the brain has been an object of great mystery and superstition. Great minds
and scholars alike have been mystified for millennia by the capacity and potentials
of the brain. However, contrary to common belief, the brain hasn't always been
associated with thought. In fact, there was much controversy over whether the
heart or the brain was the linkage between humans and the higher spiritualities,
the embodiment of the soul and the mind. To some extent, these ancient philosophies
are still with us today. Although science has proven emotions to be a function
of the brain, many of us still instinctively believe that we feel with the heart.
Today, with the help of technology, we are able to understand the biology and
the chemistry, as well as answer many age-old questions, relating to the "organ
of the mind." Nevertheless, these new found answers have only spurred more
new questions that, repeatedly, remind us of how little we know about the mysteries
of the vast neural network that distinguish human from all other living things.
The Ancient Times
The dispute over whether the
brain or the heart holds the mind was characteristic of this time period. Hippocrates
(c.460 - c.377 BCE), the legendary father of medicine, gave the earliest description
of the brain, "Not only our pleasure, our joy and our laughter but also our
sorrow, pain, grief and tears arise from the brain, and the brain alone, with
it we think and understand, see and hear and we discriminate between the ugly
and the beautiful, between what is pleasant and what is unpleasant and between
good and evil." (Fincher, 9) Similarly, during sixth century BC, Greek philosophers
Alcmaeon and Pythagoras suggested as much, labelling the brain as the organ of
the mind and the temple of the soul. Plato further described the "spherical
body" within the head as "the divinest part of us and lord over all
the rest." (Fincher, 9) However, others presented disagreeing views. Earlier
beliefs held by Hebrews, Hindus, and Chinese deemed the heart as the source of
intelligence and the nerve centre of the body. Aristotle, although a student of
Plato, supported the theory. In this heart-centred view, the brain was thought
to merely cool the hot blood originating from the heart. Despite the lack of a
dominant theory, ancient medicine attempted to cure diseases of the mind. Physicians
invented the system of four humors, or bodily fluids, consisting of phlegm, blood,
the yellow bile known as choler, and the black bile of melancholy to explain the
interaction between the mind and the body, and to derive the causes of diseases.
Another medical system was centred on the air, or pneuma, that mixed with blood
in lungs and dispersed through the body. Hippocrates thought that the air changes
the state of the brain, giving it the power of understanding.
The Medieval Times
During the medieval times,
more complicated systems have been devised in attempt to explain the interaction
of the heart, the brain, and the body. It was thought that these vital organs
worked together to produce the life force that flowed from ethereal spirits made
in the body. Spirits, unlike its modern interpretation, had a concrete form in
the medieval definition. With that concept in mind, it was believed that the intestines
fed the liver to produced natural spirit that streamed to the heart, where it
was refined into vital spirit. This enriched mixture then mixes with pneuma in
the rete mirabile, the "marvellous net" of blood vessels assumed to
be in the base of the brain, and transforms into animal spirit. After the animal
spirit entered into the ventricles, the cavities of the brain, it is distributed
through the nervous system that are pictured as tiny tubes in the body. Two schools
of thoughts emerged during this period of time in an attempt to explain how the
brain thinks. Galen, a second century Greek physician, theorized that the mental
powers of the brain come from the marrow-like substance known as white matter.
Theologians Nemesius and St. Augustine, on the other hand, endorsed the psychic-cell
complex during the fourth century. They endowed the ventricles with the soul and
common sense. The ventricles were thought to be spherical structures arranged
in a straight line, each comprising of psychic cell and is charged with the different
powers of memorativa, imaginative, cogitatia, and susus communis.
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Team C0126536
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