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From physiology to psychology
1. It started in an astronomer's lab
Nevil Maskelyne fires David Kinnebrook (1795)
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Given reason: worsening inaccuracy in measuring stars and planets positions.
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Friedrich Bessel: notion of personal equation
- Connected to the notion of errors of measurement
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Eventually leads to the notion of reaction time
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The latter is connected to the study of the nervous system
2. Johannes Müller (1801-1858)
About
Johannes Müller (brief)
More about
Johannes Müller
Major point, of TREMENDOUS IMPORTANCE for psychology:
Your awareness is not the object out there, it is of your nervous
system. The nervous system is an intermediary between
the object and your consciousness.
Each of the five kinds of nerves (visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, skin-sensory) imposes its own quality to the mind) Your optical nerve as the "seeing" energy, your auditory nerve, the "hearing" energy.
Doctrine of specific nerve energies
(a physiological parallel to Kant's a priori categories of the mind).
Note: Müller is a vitalist, and believes that there are life-energies transmitted through the nervous system (animal spirits). The transmission of sensory information was believed to be instantaneous.
It is not until Helmhotz that the speed of the nervous impulse is measured.
3. Hermann von Helmholtz (1821-1894)
Student of Johannes Müller.
- Measure of the speed of the nervous impulse. He was the first one to demonstrate that the speed of conduction was not instantaneous. (reaction time).
- Antivitalist. (researchers in his lab signed in blood an antivitalism oath)
- Tri-chromatic theory of vision (together with Young)
- Makes the difference between sensation ( sensory level) and perception (having to do with the interpretation of sensation.
- Research on audition: harmony, discord, resonance.
- Concept of unconscious inference. (ex: in depth perception)
4. Study of brain function and localization.
More about the history of brain function and localization.
Also spurred on by Kant's idea of "faculty" or pre-set ability to apprehend reality in certain ways.-
Franz Josef Gall (1758- 1828):
More about
Franz Gall Phrenology. A false
theory, based on the outside of the skull bumps etc...
More about phrenology
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Pierre Flourens (1794-1867):
Method of extirpation. (takes parts out of the brain or spinal cords of animals)
- Discovered the specific function of the cerebellum (coordination)
- and of the semi-circular canals (position in space)
- Discovered the function of the medulla (heartbeat, breathing reflex etc...)
- Thought that the cortex, which mostly governs higher processes,functioned as a unit --because sometimes animals recover functions lost through ablation.
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Paul Broca (1824-1880):
Clinical method
- Discovers the expressive speech center (post mortem examination of an aphasic man) -This area is now known as Broca's area.
- Some more on Broca another website on Broca
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Sir David Ferrier (1843-1928)
- Gustav Fritsch and Eduard Hitzig, in 1870 showed that by stimulating certain cortical areas in rabbits and dogs, one could cause contra-lateral movement.
- They were part of the research program of Dr David Ferrier who in 1876 wrote an important monograph on the cortical localization of function: The Functions of the Brain .
Santiago Ramon Y Cajal (1852-1934)
Discovered the direction of travel for nerve impulses in the brain and spinal cord. Obtained the Nobel price in 1906, together with Golgi, for establishing the neuron as the unit in the nervous system. He is also known for his work on the degeneration and regeneration of nerve cells.