Brains are organized and efficient. They're massively complex, but scientists have been hard at work for a very, very long time trying to figure out how they work. As much as 7000 years ago, people used to perform trepanation, the boring of a hole into someone's skull to cure them of who-knows-what. The history of neuroscience continues on to the greeks, with Hippocrates; to the Romans, with Galen; to the Renaissance, with Andreas Vesalius; and so forth and so on. Obviously, these few individuals I've mentioned do not constitute the whole of historic work on the brain.
One historic researcher, Marie-Jean-Pierre Fluorens, was an advocate of a particular idea about brain functioning. Fluorens believed that the structure of the brain was related to its function. He provided solid experimental evidence that the cerebellum was used in coordination, and that the cerebrum was involved in sensation and perception. While others had made such hypotheses, Fluorens used ablative techniques (damaging specific areas) to prove empirically that it was true.
Franz Joseph Gall, like Fluorens, believed that structure was related to function. He said that the bumpy brain structures (gyri) were related to behavior, and that bumps on the head were related to the bumps on the brain. Thus, he invented a pop-pseudo-science known as phrenology. Gall and his colleagues had data to back up the idea, but it wasn't very good. More or less, they measured people's heads, and then correlated their personality traits to the various shapes on their head.
Fluorens found this psuedo-science to be preposterous, and his reaction was a bit over-the-top. He actively argued against Gall and against phrenology. He demonstrated that the skull's shape was not strongly correlated with the brain's shape. Fluorens also provided additional ablative evidence that personality traits were not isolated to the neural structures under the skull regions suggested by Gall. Fluorens concluded that the brain did not localize functions, and instead acted as one big processing machine.
Fluorens's conclusion makes me a little sad. Modern neuroscience is well aware that different brain regions have different functions, despite a great deal of overlap and interdependency. The frontal cortex is involved in planning and inhibition, the motor cortex is involved in movement, the somatosensory cortex is involved in sensation, the parietal cortex is involved in association and interpretation, the visual cortex is involved in seeing, and this is just scratching the surface. (I can't help but humorously point out that all of these structures are on the surface of the brain, the cortex, so we really are just scratching the surface.)
But my sorrow is not because Fluorens was wrong. I'm saddened by the fact that Fluorens was right. He was right about the cerebellum and cerebrum, and function following form. However, at some point, Fluorens made a shift from proving things to be true to disproving the pseudo science. This shift resulted in his final false conclusion. I'm saddened that his passion for fighting what was wrong overpowered his passion for proving what was right.
For many years now, I've known this story of Fluorens, and I occasionally share it. I call it the story of Fluorens's error. His error was not his final conclusion. We make Fluorens's error by expending our energy to fight against something, instead of fighting for something.
