Brain History Timeline

By socapricious
  • 4000 BCE

    4000BC

    4000BC
    The mind altering properties of the poppy plant were first record in ancient Sumer
  • Period: 4000 BCE to

    Brain History Timeline

  • 2500 BCE

    2500BC

    2500BC
    The ancient Egyptians believed the heart was the most important organ in the body and wrote the first anatomy of the brain known as the Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus
  • 2000 BCE

    2000BC

    2000BC
    Trepanation is a form of primitive brain surgery that involves boring a hole through the skull. It may have been a method of treating headaches, epilepsy and mental illness
  • 450 BCE

    450BC

    450BC
    An early Greek physician, Alcmaeon, dissected animals and concluded that the brain not the heart is the central organ of sensation an thought
  • 335 BCE

    335BC

    335BC
    Aristotle's theories about memory correctly surmise that the process involved in short term memory (immediate recall) differ from those involved in long term memory
  • 300 BCE

    300BC

    300BC
    Herophilus and Erasistratus, two major Alexandrian biologists are the first to dissect a human body and compare it with animals. They conclude that the seat of intelligence lies in the ventricles of the brain
  • 170 BCE

    170BC

    170BC
    Galen, a physician to the Roman gladiators proposes that the brain is a glandular organ that contains four vital fluids: blood, phlegm =, choler and black bile that influence human temperament
  • 1500

    1100-1500

    1100-1500
    Brain studies ceased during the Middle Ages due to a church ban on human dissection and the study of anatomy
  • 1543

    1543

    1543
    Andreas Versalius publishes De humani corporus fabrica, one of the first known neuroscience textbooks

  • 1649

    1649
    Rene Descartes, a French philosopher and mathematics, propose the idea that the brain functions like a machine

  • 1791

    1791
    Luigi Galvani conducted experiments in which he caused frog muscles to twitch by touching them with wires. His work is an important step toward our understanding of the electrical basis of neutral activity

  • 1808

    1808
    Franz Joseph Gall founds the study of phrenology, which holds that a person's personality can be determined by the bumps on his head

  • 1848

    1848
    A railroad worker survived a bizarre accident in which his frontal lobe was pierced by an iron rod during an explosion. His mood and behaviour changed from quiet and industrious to surly and combative

  • 1872

    1872
    Charles Darwin in his book "The Expression of the Emotions of Man and Animals", proposes that only humans blush

  • 1929

    1929
    An electroencephalograph is an instrument used for measuring and recording electrical activity of the brain

  • 1934

    1934
    A prefrontal leucotomy is a surgical procedure that involves severing the connections between the prefrontal cortex and the rest of the brain

  • 1974

    1974
    A machine that provides visual information about the activity of the brain is known as a Positron Emission Topography or PET scanner

  • 1990

    1990
    President George Bush declares the decade starting in 1990 as the Decade of the Brain