Milestones in Neuroscience Research

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Milestones in Neuroscience Research
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1700 B.C.

• The Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus is written by an
  unknown Egyptian physician. This papyrus contains
  the first written record about the brain.

Hieroglyphic for the word brain
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460-379 B.C.

• Hippocrates discusses epilepsy as a disturbance
  of the brain.
• Hippocrates states that the brain is involved
  with sensation and is the seat of intelligence.

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335 B.C.

• Aristotle thought that, while the heart was the
  seat of intelligence, the brain was a cooling
  mechanism for the blood.

Know something by heart.
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1649 A.D.

• Rene Descartes describes the pineal gland as
  control center of body and mind.

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1755 A.D.

• J.B. Le Roy uses electroconvulsive therapy for
  mental illness.

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1791 A.D.

• Luigi Galvani shows that frog nerves respond to
  electrical stimulation.

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1808 A.D.

• Franz Joseph Gall publishes work on phrenology.

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1849 A.D.

• Railroad worker Phineas Gage has his brain
  pierced by an iron rod. His change in behavior
  following the injury leads to theories about the
  role of the frontal lobes in cognition and
  emotion.

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1894 A.D.

• Margaret Floy Washburn is the first woman to
  receive a Ph.D. in psychology (Cornell
  University)
• 16 years after Granville Stanley Hall (Harvard
  University)

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1898 A.D.

• Bayer Drug Company markets heroin as
  non-addicting cough medicine.

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1921 A.D.

• Otto Loewi publishes work on Vagusstoff,
  suggesting that neurons release chemicals
  (neurotransmitters) when stimulated.
• He would later receive a Nobel Prize in 1936 A.D.
  for his work on the chemical transmission between
  nerves.

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1929 A.D.

• Walter B. Cannon coins the term homeostasis.

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1936 A.D.

• Walter Freeman performs first lobotomy (removal
  of the frontal cortex) in the United States to
  treat anxiety and other mental disorders.

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1949 A.D.

• John Cade discovers that lithium is an effective
  treatment for bipolar depression.

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1953 A.D.

• Brenda Milner discusses patient H.M. who suffered
  from memory deficits (amnesia) after removal of
  portions of his temporal lobe.
• Unable to retain information about people,
  places, or objects for longer than one minute.

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1957 A.D.

• The American Medical Association recognizes
  alcoholism as a disease.

18
1960 A.D.

• Oleh Hornykiewicz shows that brain dopamine is
  lower than normal in Parkinsons disease
  patients.

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1974 A.D.

• Michael Phelps, Edward Hoffman, and Michel
  Ter-Pogossian develop the positron emission
  tomography (PET) scanner.
• 1990 A.D. Segi Ogawa and colleagues develop
  functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

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2000 A.D.

• Arvid Carlsson, Paul Greengard, and Eric Kandel
  share the Nobel Prize for their discoveries
  concerning signal transduction in the nervous
  system.

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2009 Neuroscience
Just kidding!