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Focused attention and research on higher cortical functions have led to the launch of a new medical “specialty” called either neuropsychology or cognitive/behavioral neurology. These different terms correspond to different interpretations of its contents, emphasizing either testing versus management or processes of cognition versus observable behaviors. Such trends reflected the historical evolution that occurred mainly from the end of the 19th century till the beginning of the 21st century. The history of neuropsychology indeed is based on other historical developments in brain science and clinical neurology, while at the same time it became a separate field of research with its own experts. Nowadays, neuropsychology is largely a specialized field in psychology, rather than a medical discipline, and its use by neurologists has become critically important either in clinical practice or in research.

This book attempts to cover the most important historical development in the field of neuropsychology over a little more than a century, in order to show how the present concepts used in practice originated and were established. There have been strong cultural influences, and for that same reason, the editorship and authorship of the book span across all developmental initiatives in Europe, America, and Asia – the countries where most research work has been carried out so far. We are grateful to all contributors who permitted us to present this essay on history of neuropsychology. Although we did not aim at providing exhaustive information on the subject, we are confident that most of the main concepts have been addressed, leading to a better understanding of the development of higher brain function studies in general.

Julien Bogousslavsky,Montreux, Switzerland

François Boller,Washington, DC, USA

Makoto Iwata, Tokyo, Japan

Bogousslavsky J, Boller F, Iwata M (eds): A History of Neuropsychology.

Front Neurol Neurosci. Basel, Karger, 2019, vol 44, pp 1–14 (DOI: 10.1159/000494938)

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The Discovery of Cerebral Specialization

Lauren Julius Harris

Department of Psychology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, USA

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Abstract

Of the main principles of human neuropsychology, the best known may be cerebral specialization: the left and right hemispheres play different roles in language and other higher-order functions. This chapter discusses when and how and by whom the differences were found. It begins with an account of Gall’s cortical localization theory, which set the stage. It then describes the discoveries themselves, reviews how the differences were explained, and concludes with a summary of further developments.

Introduction

In the long history of neuropsychology, a key advance and, today, perhaps the best known was the discovery that the cerebral hemispheres play different roles in higher-order functions. How and when were the differences found, and who found them?

Gall’s Localization Theory

The stage was set in the early 1800s by Franz Joseph Gall (Fig. 1). In his localization theory, or organology, he proposed that the mind has 27 discrete, self-contained faculties, or modules, in two categories: Intellectual, ranging from speech, memory of words, and music, to sense of place, space, and persons, and Moral, encompassing passions and feelings, such as courage and love of family; that each faculty has a corresponding organ and location in the brain; that the organs come in pairs, one in the left hemisphere, one in the right; that their size reflects faculty strength; and that strengths and weaknesses appear as enlargements and depressions on the brain’s surface and overlying skull, allowing their measurement by inspection ([1], p 71 ff.).

Fig. 1. Franz Joseph Gall (1758–1828). Oxford Science Archive / Heritage image. Reprinted with kind permission.

To map the brain, Gall examined heads of living persons along with skulls, plaster casts, and portraits, focusing on persons at the extremes. For example, he located the speech organ in the anterior half of the supra-orbital frontal gyri after finding an enlargement there in orators and writers and a depression in a lunatic unable to speak; for music, he looked for similarly differentiating features in persons with and without musical ability, the former including musicians, composers, and a 5-year-old child who could remember “whole concerts” heard “at most twice” ([2], p 63). Gall also studied persons with “accidental (brain) mutilations.” In one, a soldier injured by a fencing foil that penetrated just below his left eye into the site of the speech organ, “nothing is lost … but the faculty of speaking” ([2], p 23). Organology, or phrenology, the name favored by Gall’s associate, Johann Spurzheim, won both praise and scorn, the latter mostly from scientists (anatomists and physiologists), who criticized it for overstatements, reliance on anecdote and uncontrolled clinical reports, and for proposing that the organs could be measured by inspection when, as the anatomist Sewall [3] stated in 1837, “the frontal sinuses and temporal muscles alone” put the majority “beyond the reach of observation” (p 51). Gall’s most resolute critic, Pierre Flourens [4], claimed from animal experiments that the faculties are co-extensive, not discrete, and that the brain and mind function wholistically. In 1838, François Magendie [5] summed it up: phrenology was “a pseudo-science of the present day” (p 150).

It endured nonetheless. Supporters liked its simplicity, grandness of scale (ever grander as the list of faculties grew), and promise of understanding the self (for

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