Twentieth century studies in neuroscience

Twentieth century studies in neuroscience is an article detailing important and seminal studies and undertakings of scientists and doctors working in the field of neuroscience during the twentieth century.

Early

Camillo Golgi, whose scientific career commenced during 1869, and Ramon y Cajal (Cajal discovered the neuron as the basic structure of the nervous system), are considered the founders of twentieth century neuroscience. both sharing the Nobel prize during 1906 for their studies and discoveries in this field.^[1][2][3][4]

Charles Sherrington published a key finding in his 1906 work The Integrative Action of the Nervous System.^[5][6]

Joannes Gregorius Dusser de Barenne published his first work on the action of strychnine on the nervous system during 1910.^[7][8]

Harvey Cushing is recognised as the first proficient brain surgeon within the entire world.^[9]

F.T.Rogers experimented on pigeons (1922) and opossum (1924). John Fulton established a primate neurophysiology laboratory during 1929 at Yale.^[7][10][10]

Lorente de Nó published several studies of the cellular architecture of the cerebral cortex during the 1920s and 30's. Yerkes was experimenting using the chimpanzee sometime during the 1930s.^[7][10]

Walter Dandy began the practice of vascular neurosurgery in the modern understanding during 1937, when he performed the very first surgical clipping of an intracranial aneurysm.^[11]

John Farquhar Fulton, a friend of Harvey Cushing, founded the Journal of Neurophysiology and published the first comprehensive text on the physiology of the nervous system during 1938.^[7][9]

Mid-century

The discovery of the brain having a capacity for re-organisation and change which is dependent on age, i.e. that there is a critical period to which plasticity of the brain has as a limitation for continuation of this plasticity, was made current by a proponent in the field, Margaret Kennard, who experimented on monkeys during the 1930-40s.^[1]

Pitts and McCulloch were producing studies from at least 1947 onwards, contributing to the field of pattern recognition, which was at that time not yet fully born. Donald Hebb published his work Organization of Behaviour during 1949.^[5][7][12]

Sherrington, Papez and MacLean had identified many of the brainstem and limbic system functions mainly due to preparations from laboratory animals by 1950.^[13]

The Neuroscience Research program, an inter-university and international organisation, was founded during 1962 by Francis Schmitt, thus giving rise for the first time to the use of the word neuroscience, a factor which indicates the beginnings of an emergence of a distinct discipline within medicine and allied sciences, of uniting the multi-disciplinary scientific study of the brain to understand human behaviour.^{[12][14][15][16]}

Later

The Society for Neuroscience was formed during 1971.^[12]

1971 - O'Keefe and Dostrovsky published the first paper on place cells in the hippocampus,^[17] for which O'Keefe was awarded part of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.^[18]

The ten-year period after 1990 was designated the decade of the brain in the USA. Sometime after 1991 the Faculty for Undergraduate Neuroscience was formed.^{[13][19][20][21]}

References