Mind-Brain Lecture: Frank Stahnisch (Calgary)
In the historiography of neuroscience, the various programs of scientific investigation of the brain have often become subdivided as the morphological and the physiological tradition. The morphological tradition, according to this perspective, is seen as describing and mapping the form and structure of the external and interior parts of the brain and the spinal cord. The physiological tradition is regarded as a compilation of all those approaches which pursue and investigate cerebral actions and functions in their dynamic interplay. It can thus be seen as an open question, whether the distinction between the morphological and functional tradition in clinical and basic neuroscience approaches has not become obsolete with the development of recent neuroimaging techniques (fMRI, PET scans, SPECT etc.). Taken at face value, the new neuroimaging techniques (as research into the “visual brain”) seem to “relate”, “overlap”, and even “identify” the morphological with the functional substrate, when mapping out individual activation patterns across the delineated morphological structures. Public and scientific discussions over “neuromythology” and “neophrenology” – over the past decades – thus invite a reconsideration and re-conceptualization of landmark methodologies in the history of modern neuroscience. In this sense, the proposed talk will explore some historical presuppositions about the visual brain in a history of science perspective and intends to share these insights with philosophers and cognitive scientists in order to initiate further discussion from an interdisciplinary perspective. The particular focus of the talk will be on the (historical) modern morphological tradition, as beginning with the Mainz neuroanatomist Samuel Thomas Soemmerring (1755–1830) and leading to recent approaches, for example in the neurohistological work of Fred Gage and the morpho-physiological neuroimaging research of Bruce Pike to look for continuities and breaks in this research tradition. Following some landmark research steps in neuroanatomy, it shall be analyzed how the changing developments towards an integrative theory of the brain have put the emphasis on either side of the morphological and the functional distinction. All are welcome!
