Journal of the History of the Neurosciences最新文献

The famous discussion of Scythian cross-dressers in Hippocrates' Airs Waters Places (Aer.) 22 puzzled perhaps most medieval and Renaissance medical authorities. The text wrestled with a pre-Hippocratic, encephalocentric theory of spermatogenesis. Modern reception of the convoluted hypothesis put forward here gradually distilled three etiologies of failing virility: impotence, subfertility, and unmanliness. A gradual shift is discernable from increasingly Galenic neuro-andrological theories (sixteenth century) to neuropsychiatric (late-seventeenth through eighteenth century), phrenological and psychopathological (early- and late-nineteenth century), and finally early psycho-endocrinological (early-twentieth century) ideas about masculinity. Aer. 22 was a ubiquitously recurring reference across all of these episodes, indeed well beyond medicine, rendering it a highly sensitive index of change in neurodevelopmental and neuropsychiatric thinking. The pre-Enlightenment, neurology-centric onset of this extended modern history of sexual/gender medicine is briefly discussed, as well as its phrenological afterlife.

This article examines the divisive reception history of American psychiatrist and neurologist Alexander McLane Hamilton's physiognomy publication, Types of Insanity (1883). By analyzing 23 book reviews published in late-nineteenth-century medical journals, the authors present a bibliographic case study that traces the mixed professional reactions to Hamilton's work, thus revealing the fraught nature of physiognomy in the American medical community. In effect, the authors argue that the interprofessional disagreements that emerged among journal reviewers indicate the nascent efforts of psychiatrists and neurologists to oppose physiognomy in the interest of professionalization. By extension, the authors emphasize the historical value of book reviews and reception literature. Often overlooked as ephemera, book reviews register the shifting ideologies, temperaments, and attitudes of an era's readership.

The Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Biophysical Chemistry (Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer Institute) was founded in 1971 in Göttingen. Two of the 11 departments at the institute had a neuroscientific focus. Otto D. Creutzfeldt (1927-1992) and Victor P. Whittaker (1919-2016) were directors of the Neurobiological and Neurochemical Departments, respectively. Creutzfeldt's department researched the structure and function of the cerebral cortex, and Whittaker's department concentrated on the biochemical analysis of synapses and synaptic vesicles. Creutzfeldt and Whittaker were already internationally respected scientists when they were appointed to Göttingen. The next generation of departmental directors, Erwin Neher and Bert Sakmann, were "home-grown" researchers from the institute and, during their time as junior group leaders, they developed the so-called patch clamp technique, with which they were able to measure single ion channels in nerve cells. This technique revolutionized neurophysiology, and Neher and Sakmann were awarded the 1991 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their work in this area. Neher was appointed director of the Membrane Biophysics Department in 1983 and, since then, his department has mainly examined the role of Ca²⁺ in the release of neurotransmitters at synapses and in the secretion of catecholamines from chromaffin cells. From 1985, Sakmann was director of the Cell Physiology Department, and his laboratory concentrated on the molecular and physiological characterization of transmitter receptors in postsynaptic membranes. In 1989, he was appointed to the MPI for Medical Research in Heidelberg. Reinhard Jahn became director of the Neurobiology Department in 1997, researching the molecular mechanisms of the release of neurotransmitters from the presynaptic terminals, and he discovered several proteins associated with the synaptic vesicles. With their work, Neher, Sakmann, and Jahn have made the MPI for Biophysical Chemistry one of the world's leading research centers for the transmission of signals at synapses.

In 1985, historian Götz Aly published an article showing that the director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Brain Research, neuropathologist Julius Hallervorden (1882-1965), had acquired brains of Nazi "euthanasia" victims and brain specimens of at least 33 children gassed at the Brandenburg killing center on October 28, 1940, which were still kept by the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research. Aly criticized that the Max Planck Society had suppressed articles by journalist Hermann Brendel in the 1970s claiming that institutes of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society had conducted brain research within the framework of "euthanasia." New sources show that these articles, which were the subject of a lawsuit, were published in a newspaper called Freiheit run by the German branch of Scientology, of which Brendel was editor-in-chief. The articles were part of Scientology's antipsychiatry campaign. They mixed historical facts about racial hygiene and "euthanasia" in Nazi Germany with ludicrous and unfounded accusations alleging that violent, racist, and dehumanizing research methods typical in Nazi research were still carried out at the Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry. The legal conflict between the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (MPG) and Scientology about the role of brain researchers in the Nazi era is analyzed here through combining perspectives from the history of neuroscience and socio-legal history. In contrast to trials of Nazi war crimes against "euthanasia" perpetrators, the civil law case of the MPG against Scientology from 1972 until 1975 instead concerned the instrumentalization of the Nazi past of psychiatry and brain research for ideological and commercial motives. The Scientology case caused social and legal ripples, and its after effects extended to 1986, when the MPG considered taking legal steps against Aly's publication.

Dr. Bert Sakmann (b. 1942) studied at the Universities of Tuebingen, Freiburg, Berlin, Paris, and Munich, graduating in 1967. Much of his professional life has been spent in various institutes of the Max Planck Society. In 1971, a British Council Fellowship took him to the Department of Biophysics of University College London to work with Bernard Katz (1911-2003). In 1974, he obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Goettingen and, with Erwin Neher (b. 1944) at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, began work that would transform cellular biology and neuroscience, resulting in the 1991 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. In 2008, Dr. Sakmann returned to Munich, where he headed the research group "Cortical Columns in Silico" at the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology in Martinsried. Here, their group discovered the cell-type specific sensory activation patterns in different layers of a column in the vibrissal area of rodents' somatosensory cortices.

The development of the brain sciences (Hirnforschung) in the Max Planck Society (MPG) during the early decades of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) was influenced by the legacy of its precursor institution, the Kaiser Wilhelm Society for the Advancement of Science (KWG). The KWG's brain science institutes, along with their intramural psychiatry and neurology research programs, were of considerable interest to the Western Allies and former administrators of the German science and education systems in their plans to rebuild the extra-university research society-first in the British Occupation Zone and later in the American and French Occupation Zones. This formation process occurred under the physicist Max Planck (1858-1947) as acting president, and the MPG was named in his honor when it was formally established in 1948. In comparison to other international developments in the brain sciences, it was neuropathology as well as neurohistology that initially dominated postwar brain research activities in West Germany. In regard to its KWG past, at least four historical factors can be identified that explain the dislocated structural and social features of the MPG during the postwar period: first, the disruption of previously existing interactions between German brain scientists and international colleagues; second, the German educational structures that countered interdisciplinary developments through their structural focus on medical research disciplines during the postwar period; third, the moral misconduct of earlier KWG scientists and scholars during the National Socialism period; and, fourth, the deep rupture that appeared through the forced migration of many Jewish and oppositional neuroscientists who sought to find exile after 1933 in countries where they had already held active collaborations since the 1910s and 1920s. This article examines several trends in the MPG's disrupted relational processes as it sought to grapple with its broken past, beginning with the period of reinauguration of relevant Max Planck Institutes in brain science and culminating with the establishment of the Presidential Research Program on the History of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society in National Socialism in 1997.

To further our understanding of the transformations of the modern, globalized world, historical research concerning the twentieth century must acknowledge the tremendous impact that science and technology exerted and continue to exert on political, economic, military, and social developments. To better comprehend a global history of science, it is also crucial to include Germany's most prominent research organization: The Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science (MPG). Despite the existence of numerous institute chronicles and selected anniversary editions, the overall development of the MPG-historically situated in more than 80 institutes with more than 250 research service departments (of which approximately 50 have reached into the wider field of neuroscience, behavioral science, and cognitive science)-it remains largely terra incognita from a scholarly perspective. From June 2014 to December 2022, the Research Program on the History of the Max Planck Society (GMPG) opened previously neglected vistas on contemporary history, academic politics, and economic developments of the Federal Republic of Germany and its international relations by raising questions such as these: Who were the key scientific actors? In what networks did they work? In what fields had the MPG paved the way for cutting-edge innovations? What were its successes and where did it fail? In what ways were its institutional structures connected to its scientific achievements and its historical legacies? What is specific about the MPG in comparison to other national institutions in and outside of Germany? These questions relate to the emerging interdisciplinary field of the neurosciences. They refer in part to the MPG's founding years-from the late 1940s to the mid-1960s-which faced significant challenges for a "normalization process" in biomedical research and the burgeoning field of neuroscience. This special issue of the Journal of the History of the Neurosciences is composed of an introduction, five articles, and two neuroscience history interviews. It reflects on the multifold dimensions of behavioral psychology, brain research, and cognitive science developments at the MPG since its beginning through the reopening of several former Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes. After World War II, the extra-university research society-named in honor of physicist Max Planck (1858-1947)-was eventually established in the British Occupation Zone in 1946, in the American Zone in 1948, and in 1949 in the French Zone, unifying the MPG as the successor umbrella organization of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes (KWIs), now transformed into Max Planck Institutes. Chronologically, the research period covered in this special issue ranges from 1948 to 2002.