Brain and Behavior

1. Brain and Behavior

2. Mental Illness • In ancient Mesopotamia, mental illness was believed to be caused by demonic possession. • Priest-doctors treated the mentally ill with magical/religious (e.g., exorcisms, incantations, prayer, atonement) and other mystical rituals intended to drive out the evil spirit.

3. Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus1700 BC Ancient Egyptians - oldest written record using the word "brain”. • 48 cases studies • injured by falls (maybe from working on monuments or buildings) • victims of battle (many wounds appear to be caused by spears, clubs or daggers). Imhotep

4. Ancient Greece Epilepsy considered a divine punishment for sinners. Depending on the symptoms the Greeks would attribute the fits to a different deity such as Cybele, Poseidon, Mars, Hekate, Hermes or Apollo. According to the Hippocratic texts, for example, if the symptoms included teeth gnashing or convulsions on the right side, then epilepsy was attributed to Cybele, whereas if the patient screamed like a horse, then god Poseidon was to blame.

5. According to Plutarch (50-120 A.D.), all babies in ancient Sparta were examined by a council of the elders; epileptic babies were left to Apothetae, a short chasm of the mountain Taygetus (Plutarch, 1914).

6. Hippocrates (circa 400 BC) • The theory of the Four Humors of the body, ~ blood, black bile, yellow bile, and phlegm, involved a principle of balance. • Health was a consequence of balance between the four humors, while disease or sickness was the result of an imbalance. • Argued medicine is not philosophy, and therefore must be practiced on a case-by-case basis rather than from first principles.

7. Four Humors Also argued that “epilepsy” was not a divine disease, but had physical causes.

8. Aristotle – Heart is the most important organ in the body. • Mental Functions located in the heart. • Lungs and brain simply existed to cool the heart. • Based on studies of chick embryos • Held that people with heavy upper bodies were intellectually dull due to the extra weight bearing on the heart.

9. Galen of Pergamon 130 – 200 AD • medical training in Smyrna and Alexandria. • surgeon to the gladiators of Pergamos. • physician of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius • searched for physiological reasons for different behaviors in humans.

10. The Nine Temperaments Based on four humors but allowed for nine possible “temperaments” based on the levels of the four humors. In the four least desirable temperaments, one characteristic dominated the other three. In four others, a pair of temperaments dominate the other two. Galen referred to these as either “sanguine”, “choleric”, “melancholy”, and “phlegmatic”. In the ideal temperament, all four humors are balanced.

12. Galen discussed hysteria marked by pain and breathing difficulties, which were caused by a wandering uterus in women. In fact, the Greek word for womb is "hyster." The term hysteria developed from the idea of the wandering womb. The cure was marriage.

13. Psycho-Surgery Brain surgery is perhaps the oldest of the practiced medical arts. Evidence from as early as 5100 BC Trepanation is the removal of a piece of skull with out damage to the underlying blood-vessels, meninges and brain.

14. earliest trepanned skulls, the holes were made by scraping the bone away with sharp stones. • later, primitive drilling tools were used to drill small holes arranged in circles, after which the piece of bone inside the circle was removed. • The late Medieval period - introduction of mechanical drilling and sawing instruments,

15. The procedure was used as a treatment for conditions such as headaches, epilepsy, hydrocephalus and mental disorders. These were presumably attributed to possession by evil demons, such that a hole in the skull would have provided the spirits a passage for escape.

16. Bedlam In 1247 the Priory of St Mary of Bethlehem was founded, devoted to healing sick paupers. The small establishment became known as Bethlehem Hospital. Londoners later abbreviated this to 'Bethlem' and often pronounced it 'Bedlam'. At some point, the monks began to accept patients who had symptoms of mental illness rather than physical disability or disease.

17. In 1346, the City of London took over. Its patients also included the “mad”, people with learning disabilities, 'falling sickness' (epilepsy) and dementia. They were the poor and marginalized - sometimes believed to be dangerous - who lacked friends or family to support them. By 1403, 'lunatic' patients formed the majority of clients - and so England's first, and perhaps most infamous, mental institution was born.

18. Stone of Madness A curious belief held by some in the Middle Ages was that mental illness was caused by a “stone of madness” situated anywhere in the body, but most commonly in the head. Many quack healers roamed Europe performing sham operations on the mentally ill, removing the stone, and affecting a cure, which, presumably, was very short-lived.  

19. Hieronymus Bosch c. 1494 Pieter Bruegel, c. 1550 Jan Sanders van Hemessen, c. 1550

20. Physiognomy Physical features directly related to personality and mental processes

21. Franz Joseph Gall1758 - 1828 • That moral and intellectual faculties are innate • That their exercise or manifestation depends on organization • That the brain is the organ of all the propensities, sentiments and faculties • That the brain is composed of as many particular organs as there are propensities, sentiments and faculties which differ essentially from each other. • That the form of the head or cranium represents the form of the brain, and thus reflects the relative development of the brain organs.

22. He was a pioneer in the study of the localization of mental functions in the brain. Around 1800, he developed "cranioscopy", a method to divine the personality and development of mental and moral faculties on the basis of the external shape of the skull.

23. Claimed there are some 26 "organs" on the surface of the brain which affect the contour of the skull, including a "murder organ" present in murderers. Brain organs that were used got bigger and those which were not used shrunk, causing the skull to rise and fall with organ development. Gall's early work was with criminals and the insane and his brain "organs" reflected this interest. Phrenology

24. Gall’s Lecture tour beginning in 1805 50 Cities Denmark, Netherlands, Switzerland Germany, and France.

25. phrenological theories best accepted in England, where ruling class used it to justify the inferiority of colonial subjects.

26. Debunking Napoleon Bonaparte was furious because Gall's interpretation of his skull "missed" some noble qualities he thought he had. In 1808, the Institute of France assembled a committee of savants. - declared phrenology was not to be trusted.

27. Popular in the United States from 1820 to 1850 1838 - 1911 Bumps(1932)

28. Quack Quack!! Phrenology gave rise to the invention of thepsychograph by Lavery and White, a machine which could do a phrenological reading complete with printout. It is said that this device netted its owners about $200,000 at the 1934 Century of Progress Exposition in Chicago.

29. Anthropometry In the 19th and early 20th centuries, used mainly to classify potential criminals by facial characteristics. Cesare Lombroso"Criminal Anthropology" 1895, associated certain craniofacial features to criminal types. (e.g., murderers have prominent jaws, and that pickpockets have long hands and scanty beards). Popular among the police and judicial systems in Italy and in many other countries. Well until the 30s, many judges ordered "lombrosian" anthropometric analyses of defendants in criminal charges, which were used against them by the prosecution in the trial procedures.

30. Craniology Influential during the Victorian era, Used by the British to justify racism and dominance of "inferior people", such as the Irish and the black tribes of Africa. "Inferior" races were said to be similar to apes and monkeys, so that they were considered to be more kin to these animals than the main European people (such as the Anglo-Saxon, of course...).

31. Jonh Beddoe, the founder and president of the British Anthropological Institute, The Races of Man" (1862), developed "Index of Nigressence", stated that the Irish had crania similar to those of the Cro-Magnon pre-historic men and thus were a kind of "Africanoid" white race !

32. High Brow/Low Brow

33. National Hygiene Department in the Ministry of the Interior and in the Bureau for Enlightenment on Population Policy and Racial Welfare, proposed the "scientific" classification of Arians and non-Arians Official craniometric certification required by law “Many persons were sent to the death camps or denied marriage or work as a result of this "mismeasurement“. Stephen Jay Gould

34. Zeitgeist Check Pre-Industrial Revolution  ”. . . an average Roman from the 1st century A.D. would find much in common with the technology and daily life of English people in the 17th century” (Cipolla).

35. From 1300 to 1750 most people lived and worked in the country. Families lived on small plots of land, growing crops for home consumption. Children learned to milk cows, churn butter, and tend to farm animals. Rural families relied on tools that had changed little over the centuries, such as wooden plows with beasts of burden to pull them. Diet included mostly of dark rye bread and porridge, with very little meat.

36. As a rule, Europeans ate few fruits or vegetables, believing they could cause disease, depression, and flatulence. Most people were illiterate and rarely bathed. Their idea of healthcare was that physical suffering from an illness was God’s divine way of purifying the soul and imbalances of the humors (bloodletting).

37. Helping those in need Prior to the reformation, charity, feeding the hungry and caring for the sick was largely the job of the church. After Henry VIII, the government needed to take on this role. 1552 — Parish registers of the poor were introduced so that there was an official record of those who fell into the category of 'poor‘.

38. 1563 — Justices of the Peace authorized to raise compulsory funds (Tax) for relief for the poor. The poor were put into two categories The deserving poor: very young, very old, infirmed and families that fell on difficulties because of changes in circumstances. The undeserving (idol) poor: desperate who had turned to crime, begging or wandering the countryside looking for work. Poverty (vagrancy) was criminalized.

39. Two types of relief were available Outdoor relief: the poor would be left in their own homes and would be given either a 'dole' of money on which to live or be given relief in kind - clothes and food for example. This was the norm. Indoor relief: • the poor would be taken into the local almshouse • the ill would be admitted to the hospital • orphans were taken into an orphanage • the idle poor would be taken into the poor-house or workhouse where they would be set to work

40. Elizabethan Poor Law of 1601 The law required each parish (15,000 in England and wales) to elect two Overseers of the Poor. Overseer was an unpaid job. Each parishlooked after its own poor. The money was raised by taxes on middle and upper class people who were called ratepayers Methods differed widely over the various parishes.

41. The Elizabethan legislation was intended to help the 'settled' poor who found themselves out of work due to illness, or during a hard winter or a business setback. It was assumed that the settled poor would accept whatever work or relief the parish offered, whether that was indoor or outdoor relief. Neither method of assistance was seen as punitive or harsh.

42. How were the Idol Poor handled? Some parishes were more generous than others: this led to some people exploiting the legislation by moving into these more generous parishes. Some parishes dumped their undeserving poor on other communities. “Whether it’s New York or Madison or Portland, the cities that generally do the most to help people are now rewarded with the problem increasing,” Mr. Soglin said in an interview in his office here. “The cities who are the most compassionate and the most generous are rewarded with other people’s problems.” NYT, Sept, 2015 CBS NEWSJanuary 10, 2018, SF sues Nevada

43. The ratepayers objected to this abuse and in 1662 the Settlement Laws were passed in order to prevent it. Unfortunately, the laws also reduced the mobility of labor and discouraged the unemployed from leaving the parish of their birth in order to find work.

44. Landowners would demolish empty houses in order to reduce the population on their lands and prevent the return of those who had left. At the same time, they would employ laborers from neighboring parishes who could be laid off without warning but would not increase the rates in the parish where they worked.

45. Pre-Industrial RevolutionCottage Industry Agricultural families worked at night in their cottages to spin or weave cloth with rudimentary machines, such as an old spinning wheel.

46. Population Boom The human population began to increase due to declining death rates. The death rates decreasing because, as the country transitions into an industrial country, there are improvements in the economy and social conditions. These changes lead to the control of diseases, the production of more food, better jobs, and improved medical care and sanitation.

47. Innovation, Finances, Centralization Central bank of England established 1694  - credit for investment Invention of machines of mass production particularly in Textiles. Industry grew and became centralized in the cities.

48. Steam Engine Increases in mining and coal Mechanization of manufacturing Rail roads Factories (first 1769)

49. Social Conditions The Industrial Revolution brought about a greater volume and variety of factory-produced goods and raised the standard of living for many people, particularly for the middle and upper classes.

50. Unskilled labor was cheap. Wages for those who labored in factories were low and working conditions could be dangerous and monotonous. Unskilled workers had little job security and were easily replaceable.