Book Review

Discoveries in the Human Brain: Neuroscience prehistory, brain structure, and function

N Engl J Med 1998; 339:207July 16, 1998

Article

Discoveries in the Human Brain: Neuroscience prehistory, brain structure, and function
By Louise H. Marshall and Horace W. Magoun. 322 pp. Totowa, N.J., Humana Press, 1998. $59.50. ISBN: 0-89603-435-6

As the decade of the brain draws to a close, it is worthwhile to review some of the progress made in advancing our knowledge of this fascinating and enigmatic structure. Louise Marshall (director of the Neuroscience History Archives at the Brain Research Institute) and Horace Magoun (a noted research neuroscientist who unfortunately died before the completion of this book) have taken on a huge subject, but they have succeeded in rendering it not only comprehensible, in spite of the convoluted twists and blind alleys that constitute the development of neuroscience, but also genuinely interesting. Their presentation allows the story to speak for itself as much as possible. The reader is able to appreciate how, as Thomas Kuhn noted, scientific progress is generated by cycles of concept and counter-concept that successively fit the experimental data better — the energy generated by differences of opinion serving to drive researchers forward to find ways to support their own ideas and refute those of others.

An attractive feature of this book is due to its origin as a series of historical posters that Magoun exhibited at various international meetings. The book is highly visual, illustrated throughout with pictures that have been well chosen to help convey rapidly and accurately what the various investigators made of what they were seeing. It is also amply illustrated with pictures of the investigators themselves. These serve to break up and individualize the panoply of views presented. The book is peppered with quotations from the great figures in the history of neuroscience, and the authors have leaned heavily (as they freely admit) on the bible: Clarke and O'Malley's History of the Brain and Spinal Cord (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968). The quotations have been well chosen to demonstrate just how carefully the investigators, perhaps mindful of the many controversies that dog their subject, interpreted their findings. One of the quotations, from Santiago Ramón y Cajal, is a warning to all current and budding neuroscientists: “The supreme dignity which surrounds the brain and the awesome complexity of its workings presuppose the existence of an extremely complicated warp, sure to ensnare those who imagine that nature unfolds multifarious exalted phenomena according to schematic formulae.”

The topics covered represent a fair survey of our knowledge until the beginning of the 1970s, the stated end point of the authors. The book starts with some general issues, such as theories of phylogeny and ontogeny, and then addresses the interpretation of the cerebral structures, with the history of interpretations for each structure treated separately, culminating in syntheses of theories to explain three major integrative systems: the limbic system and memory, corticothalamic connections and cybernetics, and the brain-stem reticular formation and arousal. Although the book ends at a point where the field accelerates and diversifies rapidly, it provides a sound basis for surveying the newer developments. One stated aim of the authors is to demonstrate how collaborations between different disciplines (such as that between experimental psychology and neuroanatomy) have often led to breakthroughs in science. The strengths and weaknesses of such approaches (the former due to the extra insights gained, and the latter to the use of unjustifiable assumptions) are noted throughout, and they prove instructive.

This book is certainly sufficiently clear and well illustrated to be of interest to general clinicians as well as workers in neuroscience or the cognitive sciences. It is also refreshingly free of jargon. I highly recommend the book both as an introduction to the history of neuroscience and as a secondary source, since it includes comprehensive references. The book's quality and reasonable price (thanks to a charitable grant) should thus attract many and varied readers.

David Maudgil, M.R.C.P.
Institute of Neurology, London WC1N 3BG, United Kingdom