History of Neuroscience

People Influencing Neuroscience

Stonehenge built

3000 bc - 2000 bc

Great wall initiated

700 bc

Confucius

551 bc - 479 bc

Empedocles

490 bc - 430 bc

Socrates

469 bc - 399 bc

Democritus

460 bc - 370 bc

Classical Period of Greece

450 bc - 300 bc

Plato

427 bc - 347 bc

Aristotle

384 bc - 322 bc

Cesar August

63 bc - 14 ad

Jesus

4 bc - 30 ad

Mohammed

571 - 632

Nicholas Copernicus

1473 - 1543

Martin Luther

1483 - 1546

Galileo Galilei

1564 - 1642

Descartes

1596 - 1650

John Lock

1632 - 1704

Newton

1642 - 1727

Rousseau

1712 - 1778

Alessandro Volta invents the wet cell battery

1800

Nietzsche

1844 - 1900

Sigmund Freud publishes The Interpretation of Dreams

1900

Skinner

1904 - 1990

Hans Berger publishes his findings about the first human electroencephalogram

1929

Lunar Landing

1969

Historical Epochs and Events

Bronze Age

3300 bc - 1300 bc

Pre- Socratic Period

600 bc - 450 bc

Classical Period of Greece

450 bc - 300 bc

Hellenistic period

300 bc - 100 bc

Greco-Roman Period

100 bc - 400

the Dark ages

400 - 1000

Middle Ages

1000 - 1450

Crusades

1096 - 1290

Renaissance

1450 - 1600

Spanish Inquisition

1480 - 1808

Enlightenment

1637 - 1800

American Revolution

1775 - 1784

First automobile patented

1886

Harvey Cushing is first to electrically stimulate human sensory cortex

1909

Cold War

1945 - 1991

Vietnam War

1957 - 1975

Drug Abuse Control Act

1965

Iraq War

2001 - 2012

The future

4000

Main

Clay tablets from Mesopotamia discuss how to use alcohol to dilute medicine

4000 bc

Euphoriant effect of poppy plant reported in Sumerian records

4000 bc

Shen Nung originates acupuncture

2700 bc

Edwin Smith surgical papyrus written. First written record of the nervous system

1700 bc

Ayuvedic system of Hindu medicine develops

1400 bc - 1200 bc

Alcmaion of Crotona dissects sensory and optic nerves

500 bc

Hippocrates discusses epilepsy as a disturbance of the brain

460 bc - 379 bc

Hippocrates states brain is involved with sensation and seat of intelligence

460 bc - 379 bc

Plato teaches at Athens. Believes brain is seat of mental process

387 bc

Aristotle writes about sleep; believes heart is seat of mental process

335 bc

Herophilus (Father of Anatomy)-says ventricles are seat of human intelligence

335 bc - 280 bc

Erasistratus of Chios notes divisions of the brain

280 bc

Marinus describes the tenth cranial nerve

100

Galen lecture On the Brain

177

Rhazes describes seven cranial nerves, 31 spinal nerves

900

Al-Zahrawi describes several surgical treatments for neurological disorders

1000

Ammar ibn Ali of Mosul extracts cataract from the eye

1000

Ibn Al-Haytham (Alhazen) publishes Book of Optics

1021

St. Mary of Bethlehem Hospital is used exclusively for the mentally ill

1402

Institution for the mentally ill established in Valencia, Spain

1410

Leonardo da Vinci produces wax cast of human ventricles

1504

Nicolo Massa describes the cerebrospinal fluid

1536

Giulio Cesare Aranzi coins the term hippocampus

1564

Sir Walter Raleigh mentions arrow poison in his book

1596

Johannes Kepler describes inverted retinal image

1604

Lazarus Riverius textbook describing impairments on consciousness published

1611

Robert Hooke details his first microscope

1665

l'Abbe Edme Mariotte discovers the blind spot

1668

John Locke writes Essay Concerning Human Understanding

1696

Antonio Pacchioni describes arachnoid granulations

1705

Jean Astruc coins the term reflex

1736

The Society of Friends establishes hospital-based environment for mentally ill

1752

Albrecht von Haller provides scientific description of the cerebrospinal fluid

1766

Felice Fontana describes the microscopic features of axoplasm from an axon

1781

Georg Joseph Beer founds the first eye hospital in Vienna

1786

Giovanni Fabbroni suggests nerve action involves chemical and physical factors

1792

Johann Christian Reil uses alcohol to harden the brain

1809

Charles Bell- functional differences of dorsal and ventral roots of spinal cord

1811

James Parkinson publishes An Essay on the Shaking Palsy

1817

Friedrich Burdach names the cingular gyrus

1822

John C. Caldwell publishes Elements of Phrenology

1824

Jean-Baptiste Bouillaud presents cases of loss of speech after frontal lesions

1825

Luigi Rolando describes sulcus that separates precentral and postcentral gyri

1825

1826 - Johannes Muller publishes theory of "specific nerve energies"

1826

Massachusetts establishes a "State Lunatic Hospital" for the mentally ill

1832

Robert Remak suggests that nerve fiber and nerve cell are joined

1838

Theordor Schwann describes myelin-forming cell in the peripheral nervous system

1838

Baillarger - connections between white and gray matter of cerebral cortex

1840

Horace Wells uses nitrous oxide during a tooth extraction

1844

Weber discover that stimulation of the vagus nerve inhibits the heart

1845

Chloroform anesthesia used by James Young Simpson

1847

Heinrich Muller is first to describe the colored pigments in the retina

1851

Bartolomeo Panizza shows the occipital lobe is essential for vision

1855

George Huntington describes symptoms of a hereditary chorea

1872

Carl Wernicke publishes Der Aphasische Symptomencomplex on aphasias

1874

Sergei Korsakoff describes symptoms characteristic in alcoholics

1876

Wilhelm Wundt sets up lab devoted to study human behavior

1879

William Gill describes anorexia nervosa

1888

Santiago Ramon y Cajal argues that nerve cells are independent elements

1889

William His coins the term dendrite

1889

Rudolph Albert von Kolliker coins the term axon

1896

Charles Scott Sherrington coins the term synapse

1897

Francis Gotch describes a "refractory phase" between nerve impulses

1899

M. Lewandowsky coins the term "blood-brain barrier"

1900

Ivan Pavlov coins the term conditioned reflex

1903

Emil Kraepelin names Alzheimer's disease

1910

Otto Loewi publishes work on Vagusstoff

1921

Egas Moniz publishes work on the first human frontal lobotomy

1936

B.F. Skinner- The Behavior of Organisms- describes operant conditioning

1938

The World Health Organization is founded

1948

MAO-inhibitors introduced to treat psychotics

1951

James Olds describes rewarding effects of hypothalamic stimulation

1954

Haloperidol introduced as a neuroleptic drug

1958

Reynolds describes analgesic effect of electrical stimulation of PAG

1969

First NMR image (a mouse) is taken

1974

Fluoxetine (Prozac) introduced- treatment for depression

1987

The gene responsible for Huntington's disease is identified

1993

Gilman and Rodbell share the Nobel Prize for G-protein coupled receptors

1994

Prusiner awarded the Nobel Prize for the discovery of prions

1997

Buck and Axel Nobel Prize -organization of the olfactory system

2004