Johann Jakob Wepfer (1620-1695): A review of his contributions to neuropsychology on the quadricentennial of his birth

The effects of brain damage on behavior have been reported by authors from the Greek, Roman, Medieval, Renaissance, and seventeenth-century medical traditions. However, few of the reported cases discussed mind-brain relationships, even fewer reported data that offered a description of cognitive functions, and none described a clear association of a functional mechanism of cognitive impairment with identifiable focal brain damage. An exception is found in the case studies by Johann Jakob Wepfer (1620-1695). After reviewing the pre-seventeenth-century background and Wepfer's milieu, we analyze his texts on neuroanatomy, apoplexy, and brain vascularization (Observationes anatomicae ex cadaveribus eorum, quos sustulit apoplexia cum exercitatione de ejus loco affecto) and his remarkable collection of 222 neurological cases (Observationes medico-practicae de affectibus capitis internis & externis), posthumously published in 1727. We focus on his reports concerning on the presence of aphasia, memory disorders, and unilateral neglect, correlated with focal brain damage, with particular emphasis on his examination of language impairments.

[Alexander Romanovich Luria (1902-1977). Part I. The psychologist]

Starting with an overview of AR Luria's biography, we will present his works in general psychology which are key to his conception of neuropsychology (this will be developed in a forthcoming paper). We will focus on the construction of the historical and cultural theory of psychology developed with LS Vygotski, according to which, in man, the natural mental activities, related to the genetic evolution and shared by all humankind, are transformed into higher cortical functions (that is conscious and voluntary activities) through the mediation of language and the products of social activity, thus differ according to the development of societies. We review the Luria's studies devoted to support the theory in his expeditions in Central Asia, his studies in twins and intellectual disabled children, and the demonstration of the role of speech in the child development of the higher mental activities and regulation of behavior.

Under the Mind's Hood: What We Have Learned by Watching the Brain at Work

Imagine you were asked to investigate the workings of an engine, but to do so without ever opening the hood. Now imagine the engine fueled the human mind. This is the challenge faced by cognitive neuroscientists worldwide aiming to understand the neural bases of our psychological functions. Luckily, human ingenuity comes to the rescue. Around the same time as the Society for Neuroscience was being established in the 1960s, the first tools for measuring the human brain at work were becoming available. Noninvasive human brain imaging and neurophysiology have continued developing at a relentless pace ever since. In this 50 year anniversary, we reflect on how these methods have been changing our understanding of how brain supports mind.

Alexander Bain's Mind and Body (1872): An underappreciated contribution to early neuropsychology

Alexander Bain (1818-1903) is well known for his two influential textbooks, The senses and the intellect (1855) and The emotions and the will (1859). In comparison, Bain's Mind and body: The theories of their relation (1872) has been of limited interest to historians, and it is here where he presents one of the first neural network models. This paper addresses the historical foundations of Bain's neural network model and explores some of his primary influences. Additionally, this study addresses some of the reasons Bain's Mind and Body did not receive the historical notice his earlier works garnered.

Marin Cureau de La Chambre (1594-1669), a 17th-century pioneer in neuropsychology

Marin Cureau de La Chambre (1594-1669) was a physician from Le Mans who advised and treated two French Kings, Louis XIII and Louis XIV, as well as his patron, Chancellor Pierre Séguier. As both a physician and a philosopher, he was among the first members of the Académie Française and the Académie des Sciences. His key role in dethroning Latin and using French in its place would have sufficed to ensure his notoriety, as French then became a vehicle for disseminating the sciences throughout Europe. However, it was his interpretation of "the functions of the soul" that made him a true pioneer in the field of neuropsychology, even though he has since been forgotten and overlooked. Indeed, he developed concepts that even today seem contemporary, in particular, concepts dealing with emotions and memory in both animals and human beings.

[Jose Ingenieros and the amusias: the beginning of the neuropsychology in Argentina]

The Argentine neuropsychological school is born of the hand of the European school and is part of the beginning of the Experimental Psychology. In 1896 Horacio Pinero creates the first Department of Psychology at the University of Buenos Aires and in 1898 the first laboratory of Experimental Psychology is annexed. Jose Ingeniero, psychiatrist, neurologist, politician and above all sociologist publishes in France his work about the musical aphasia, the first neuropsychological work with international significance. In the same redeems to Charcot instead of to Knoblauch like the first one to describe the amusias, it speaks of an intelligence instead of a musical language and proposes a new classification and a methodology of assessment with a neurological-psychiatric integrative perspective. This article gave rise to this book in French on the musical language and its hysterical alterations awarded by the Academy of Medicine of Paris.

[Brenda Milner: 100 years from the birthday.]

Brenda Milner is a renowned British-Canadian neuropsychologist known as «the founder of neuropsychology». She was born about 100 years ago, and as a Cambridge graduate, she started her research carreer of a neurobiologist and psychologist in 1940s. Her comprehensive contribution to the development of clinical neuropsychology thereafter was marked by several awards including the Balzan Prize for Cognitive Neuroscience in 2009 and the Kavli Prize in Neuroscience in 2014 (shared with Marcus Raichle and John O'Keefe), as well as memberships in the Royal Society of London, the Royal Society of Canada and the National Academy of Sciences. She holds more than 20 honorary degrees at universities across Europe, Canada and the USA. Currently, Brenda Milner keeps working as a professor in the Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery at McGill University (Montreal, Canada) and a professor of Psychology at the Montreal Neurological Institute with her research mainly focused on the inter-hemispheric interactions. One of important contributions in neuropsychology by Brenda Milner was brought to the study of mechanisms of memory worsening in elderly. Due to the fact that most diseases associated with aging are characterized by memory disorders, this topic finds its high importance in the studies of gerontology. Working with patients who suffered the brain lobes removal, Brenda Milner received many new data on the complex and hierarchical organization of memory mechanisms in the brain. A unique case of an 86-year-old patient M.P. showed the brain changes due to lobectomy to remain stable for dozens of years. Neuropsychological methods have shown that in her 86 years, the patient with lobectomy was in no way inferior to her peers. Minor violations of verbal memory have been preserved throughout life without any deterioration. This long-term and rather interesting study is described in detail in the present article.

The disparate histories of binocular vision and binaural hearing

Vision and hearing are dependent on disparities of spatial patterns received by two eyes and on time and intensity differences to two ears. However, the experiences of a single world have masked attention to these disparities. While eyes and ears are paired, there has not been parity in the attention directed to their functioning. Phenomena involving binocular vision were commented upon since antiquity whereas those about binaural hearing are much more recent. This history is compared with respect to the experimental manipulations of dichoptic and dichotic stimuli and the instruments used to stimulate the paired organs. Binocular color mixing led to studies of binaural hearing and direction and distance in visual localization were analyzed before those for auditory localization. Experimental investigations began in the nineteenth century with the invention of instruments like the stereoscope and pseudoscope, soon to be followed by their binaural equivalents, the stethophone and pseudophone.

APA/APAGS Award for Distinguished Graduate Student in Professional Psychology: Octavio Andres Santos

The APA/APAGS Award for Distinguished Graduate Student in Professional Psychology is awarded annually by the APA Board of Professional Affairs (BPA) and the American Psychological Association of Graduate Students (APAGS) to a graduate student who has demonstrated outstanding practice and application of psychology. The 2017 award winner is Octavio Andres Santos, who has demonstrated through several initiatives "effective engagement with advocacy, professional organizations, and research in the area of health disparities and multicultural/multilingual assessment." Santos's award citation, biography, and a selected bibliography are presented here. (PsycINFO Database Record

Functional brain imaging in neuropsychology over the past 25 years

OBJECTIVE

Outline effects of functional neuroimaging on neuropsychology over the past 25 years.

METHOD

Functional neuroimaging methods and studies will be described that provide a historical context, offer examples of the utility of neuroimaging in specific domains, and discuss the limitations and future directions of neuroimaging in neuropsychology.

RESULTS

Tracking the history of publications on functional neuroimaging related to neuropsychology indicates early involvement of neuropsychologists in the development of these methodologies. Initial progress in neuropsychological application of functional neuroimaging has been hampered by costs and the exposure to ionizing radiation. With rapid evolution of functional methods-in particular functional MRI (fMRI)-neuroimaging has profoundly transformed our knowledge of the brain. Its current applications span the spectrum of normative development to clinical applications. The field is moving toward applying sophisticated statistical approaches that will help elucidate distinct neural activation networks associated with specific behavioral domains. The impact of functional neuroimaging on clinical neuropsychology is more circumscribed, but the prospects remain enticing.

CONCLUSIONS

The theoretical insights and empirical findings of functional neuroimaging have been led by many neuropsychologists and have transformed the field of behavioral neuroscience. Thus far they have had limited effects on the clinical practices of neuropsychologists. Perhaps it is time to add training in functional neuroimaging to the clinical neuropsychologist's toolkit and from there to the clinic or bedside. (PsycINFO Database Record

Neuropsychology of Learning Disabilities: The Past and the Future

Over the past 50 years, research on children and adults with learning disabilities has seen significant advances. Neuropsychological research historically focused on the administration of tests sensitive to brain dysfunction to identify putative neural mechanisms underlying learning disabilities that would serve as the basis for treatment. Led by research on classifying and identifying learning disabilities, four pivotal changes in research paradigms have produced a contemporary scientific, interdisciplinary, and international understanding of these disabilities. These changes are (1) the emergence of cognitive science, (2) the development of quantitative and molecular genetics, (3) the advent of noninvasive structural and functional neuroimaging, and (4) experimental trials of interventions focused on improving academic skills and addressing comorbid conditions. Implications for practice indicate a need to move neuropsychological assessment away from a primary focus on systematic, comprehensive assessment of cognitive skills toward more targeted performance-based assessments of academic achievement, comorbid conditions, and intervention response that lead directly to evidence-based treatment plans. Future research will continue to cross disciplinary boundaries to address questions regarding the interaction of neurobiological and contextual variables, the importance of individual differences in treatment response, and an expanded research base on (a) the most severe cases, (b) older people with LDs, and (c) domains of math problem solving, reading comprehension, and written expression. (JINS, 2017, 23, 930-940).

[Santiago Ramón y Cajal and Ivan Petrovich Pavlov: does complementarity exist between their theories?]

INTRODUCTION

Few authors have compared the life and work of Cajal and Pavlov and they refer normally to their coincidence at the XIV Medicine International Congress of Madrid in 1903.

AIMS

To describe the theoretical models of both authors and to explain the possible complementarities between the works of Cajal and Pavlov.

DEVELOPMENT

We describe the principal bases of the 'neuron theory' of Cajal, compared to the 'reticulated theory', the principal results of Cajal's investigations and the contributions he made to the concept of plasticity. We describe the 'Pavlov's conditional reflections theory', its principal postulates, pavlovians laws and the typology of the nervous system according to Pavlov.

CONCLUSIONS

The works of Cajal and Pavlov can be understood as complementary under Wallon's proposal and in the frame of the 'strategic epistemology', where the advance of the science is achieved from different but complementary strategies that help each other to construct stronger theoretical models.

Contributions of Hebb and Vygotsky to an integrated science of mind

Hebb and Vygotsky are two of the most influential figures of psychology in the first half of the twentieth century. They represent cultural and biological approaches to explaining human development, and thus a number of their ideas remain relevant to current psychology and cognitive neuroscience. In this article, we examine similarities and differences between these two important figures, exploring possibilities for a theoretical synthesis between their two literatures, which have had little contact with each other. To pursue these goals, the following topics are discussed: (a) Hebb and Vygotsky's lives and training; (b) their innovations in theory building relating to an "objective psychology" and objective science of mind; (c) their developmental approach; (d) their treatment of mediation and neuropsychology; and (e) their current relevance and possible integration of their views. We argue that considering the two together improves prospects for a more complete and integrated approach to mind and brain in society.

Mysterious "Monsieur Leborgne": The mystery of the famous patient in the history of neuropsychology is explained

As of spring 2011, 150 years have passed since the death of one of the most famous neurological patients of the nineteenth century. A Frenchman, "Monsieur Leborgne" also known by the nickname "Tan," was hospitalized due to an almost complete loss of speech. His case was presented in 1861, during a seating of the Société d'Anthropologie de Paris by a physician, Pierre Paul Broca (1824-1880), who used this occasion to report that he had discovered, in the middle part of patient's left frontal lobe, the cortical speech center. This area was later named "Broca's area." Both the patient and his medical records were the subject of numerous descriptions and citations in the medical literature. The patient's full identity and social background has remained a mystery until now. This article presents biographical data concerning Leborgne and his family based on archive registers in France.

Shadows and darkness in the brain of a genius: aspects of the neuropsychological literature about the final illness of Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)

In 1948 the famous French neurologist Théophile Alajouanine published the article "Aphasia and artistic realization", a landmark in the field of research about aphasia, which discussed the case of the composer Maurice Ravel (1875-1937). Since then, many researchers have explored the final illness of the composer. In 2003 Medical Science Monitor published 2 articles about the case. In this article we intend to present works published on the Ravel case, to discuss them, and to suggest a general overview on the topic. Many hypotheses have been proposed by researchers, but complete diagnosis is still an enigma, since no post-mortem was made. The most up-to-date perspective seems to point to comorbidity of superimposed elements, which might date back to the composer's fragile youth.

Language and human nature: Kurt Goldstein's neurolinguistic foundation of a holistic philosophy

Holism in interwar Germany provides an excellent example for social and political influences on scientific developments. Deeply impressed by the ubiquitous invocation of a cultural crisis, biologists, physicians, and psychologists presented holistic accounts as an alternative to the "mechanistic worldview" of the nineteenth century. Although the ideological background of these accounts is often blatantly obvious, many holistic scientists did not content themselves with a general opposition to a mechanistic worldview but aimed at a rational foundation of their holistic projects. This article will discuss the work of Kurt Goldstein, who is known for both his groundbreaking contributions to neuropsychology and his holistic philosophy of human nature. By focusing on Goldstein's neurolinguistic research, I want to reconstruct the empirical foundations of his holistic program without ignoring its cultural background. In this sense, Goldstein's work provides a case study for the formation of a scientific theory through the complex interplay between specific empirical evidences and the general cultural developments of the Weimar Republic.

The limbic system conception and its historical evolution

Throughout the centuries, scientific observers have endeavoured to extend their knowledge of the interrelationships between the brain and its regulatory control of human emotions and behaviour. Since the time of physicians such as Aristotle and Galen and the more recent observations of clinicians and neuropathologists such as Broca, Papez, and McLean, the field of affective neuroscience has matured to become the province of neuroscientists, neuropsychologists, neurologists, and psychiatrists. It is accepted that the prefrontal cortex, amygdala, anterior cingulate cortex, hippocampus, and insula participate in the majority of emotional processes. New imaging technologies and molecular biology discoveries are expanding further the frontiers of knowledge in this arena. The advancements of knowledge on the interplay between the human brain and emotions came about as the legacy of the pioneers mentioned in this field. The aim of this paper is to describe the historical evolution of the scientific understanding of interconnections between the human brain, behaviour, and emotions.

Interview with Michael Gazzaniga

Widely considered the father of the field of cognitive neuroscience, Professor Michael S. Gazzaniga is one of the world's premier neuroscientists. He founded the Center for Neuroscience at the University of California, Davis; the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at Dartmouth College; the Cognitive Neuroscience Institute; Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience; and the Cognitive Neuroscience Society. He is currently the director of the Sage Center for the Study of the Mind at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Born on December 12, 1939 in Los Angeles and educated at Dartmouth College, he received his Ph.D. in psychobiology at the California Institute of Technology under the tutelage of Roger Sperry. As a graduate student, Professor Gazzaniga initiated the first lateralized testing of human split-brain patients, leading to a fundamental shift in our understanding of functional lateralization in the brain and how the cerebral hemispheres communicate with one another. His many scholarly publications and pioneering work during the last 50 years have produced significant contributions to our understanding of how the brain enables the mind. His landmark 1995 book for MIT Press, The Cognitive Neurosciences, now in its fourth edition, is recognized as the sourcebook for the field. He has also published many books accessible to a lay audience, including Mind Matters, Nature's Mind, and The Ethical Brain.

Anthropological neurology: symptoms and their meanings according to Joseph Prick (1909-1978)

This article describes the life and work of the Dutch neurologist Joseph Prick (1909-1978) and his idea of an anthropological neurology. According to Prick, neurological symptoms should not only be explained from an underlying physico-chemical substrate but also be regarded as meaningful. We present an outline of the historical and philosophical context of his ideas with a focus on the theory of the human body by the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961) and the concept of anthropology-based medicine developed by Frederik Buytendijk (1887-1974). We give an overview of anthropological neurology as a clinical practice and finally we discuss the value of Prick's approach for clinical neurology today.

Margaret Kennard (1899-1975): not a 'principle' of brain plasticity but a founding mother of developmental neuropsychology

According to the 'Kennard Principle', there is a negative linear relation between age at brain injury and functional outcome. Other things being equal, the younger the lesioned organism, the better the outcome. But the 'Kennard Principle' is neither Kennard's nor a principle. In her work, Kennard sought to explain the factors that predicted functional outcome (age, to be sure, but also staging, laterality, location, and number of brain lesions, and outcome domain) and the neural mechanisms that altered the lesioned brain's functionality. This paper discusses Kennard's life and years at Yale (1931-1943); considers the genesis and scope of her work on early-onset brain lesions, which represents an empirical and theoretical foundation for current developmental neuropsychology; offers an historical explanation of why the 'Kennard Principle' emerged in the context of early 1970s work on brain plasticity; shows why uncritical belief in the 'Kennard Principle' continues to shape current research and practice; and reviews the continuing importance of her work.

Lugaro's forgotten legacy: the hypothesis of negative neurotropism

Among the most fascinating riddles in neuroscience is the one concerning the poor regeneration capacity of the adult mammalian CNS. A central aetiological hypothesis for the lack of axonal regeneration in the CNS concerns the inhibitory role of myelin components of the white matter. The main exponent of this hypothesis in the 1980s and 1990s has been Martin Schwab, although before him Martin Berry and others had suggested an inhibitory role for CNS myelin. However, a hypothesis for a negative neurotropic action exerted by CNS white matter was formulated by Lugaro already in 1906. This article is a belated tribute to Lugaro's original contribution in the field of neuroregeneration.

Charles Darwin and the evolution of human grammatical systems

Charles Darwin's evolutionary theories of animal communication were deeply embedded in a centuries-old model of association psychology, whose prodromes have most often been traced to the writings of Aristotle. His notions of frequency of occurrence of pairings have been passed down through the centuries and were a major ontological feature in the formation of associative connectivity. He focused on the associations of cause and effect, contiguity of sequential occurrence, and similarity among items. Cause and effect were often reduced to another type of contiguity relation, so that Aristotle is most often evoked as the originator of the associative bondings through similarity and contiguity, contiguity being the most powerful and frequent means of association. Contiguity eventually became the overriding mechanism for serial ordering of mental events in both perception and action. The notions of concatenation throughout the association psychology took the form of "trains" of events, both sensory and motor, in such a way that serial ordering came to be viewed as an item-by-item string of locally contiguous events. Modern developments in the mathematics of serial ordering have advanced in sophistication since the early and middle twentieth century, and new computational methods have allowed us to reevaluate the serial concatenative theories of Darwin and the associationists. These new models of serial order permit a closer comparative scrutiny between human and nonhuman. The present study considers Darwin's insistence on a "degree" continuity between human and nonhuman animal serial ordering. We will consider a study of starling birdsongs and whether the serial ordering of those songs provides evidence that they have a syntax that at best differs only in degree and not in kind with the computations of human grammatical structures. We will argue that they, in fact, show no such thing.

Charles Darwin's emotional expression "experiment" and his contribution to modern neuropharmacology

In the late 1860s and early 1870s, Darwin had corresponded with the French physician and physiologist, G. B. A. Duchenne, regarding Duchenne's experimental manipulation of human facial expression of emotion, by applying Galvanic electrical stimulation directly to facial muscles. Duchenne had produced a set of over 60 photographic plates to illustrate his view that there are different muscles in the human face that are separately responsible for each individual emotion. Darwin studied this material very carefully and he received permission from Duchenne in 1871 to reproduce several of these images in The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872). Darwin had doubted Duchenne's view that there were individual muscle groups that mediate the expression of dozens of separable emotions, and he wondered whether there might instead be a fewer set of core emotions that are expressed with great stability worldwide and across cultures. Prompted by his doubts regarding the veracity of Duchenne's model, Darwin conducted what may have been the first-ever single-blind study of the recognition of human facial expression of emotion. This single experiment was a little-known forerunner for an entire modern field of study with contemporary clinical relevance. Moreover, his specific question about cross-cultural recognition of the cardinal emotions in faces is a topic that is being actively studied (in the twenty-first century) with the hope of developing novel biomarkers to aid the discovery of new therapies for the treatment of schizophrenia, autism, and other neuropsychiatric diseases.

Darwin's unsolved problem: the place of consciousness in an evolutionary world

"How does consciousness commence?" When Darwin set about developing his evolution theory on his return from the Beagle circumnavigation in 1836, he quickly realized that one major problem was, precisely, the existence of "mind" in a material world. This paper reviews his early struggles with this problem and pursues it into his later writings, especially the 1872 Expression of Emotions and in the work of his disciple G. J. Romanes. In the 1871 Descent of Man, Darwin admits defeat, writing that "In what manner the mental powers were first developed in the lowest organisms is as hopeless an enquiry as how life itself first originated. These are problems for the distant future" (p. 100). That "distant future" has now arrived and plausible answers to Darwin's first question have been developed. The bicentennial celebrations provide an opportunity to ask again whether we are any closer to a solution of the second. They also provide an opportunity to emphasize Darwin's lifelong interest in the relationships between mind, brain, and behavior.

The triune brain in antiquity: Plato, Aristotle, Erasistratus

Tripartite neuropsychologies have featured through two and half millennia of Western thought. They received a modern airing in Paul MacLean's well-known text The Triune Brain. This paper examines the origin of these triune psychophysiologies. It is argued that the first such psychophysiology was developed in the fifth century BCE in the Republic and its Pythagorean sequel, the Timaeus. Aristotle, Plato's pupil and colleague, developed a somewhat similar theory, though this time based on his exhaustive biological researches. Finally, a generation later, Herophilus and Erasistratus at the Alexandrian Museum put together a more anatomically informed tripartite theory that, somewhat modified by Galen in the second century AD, remained the prevailing orthodoxy for nearly fifteen hundred years until it was overturned by the great figures of the Renaissance. Nonetheless, as already mentioned, the notion that human neuropsychology is somehow best thought of as having a tripartite structure has remained remarkably resilient and has reappeared time and again in modern and early modern times. This paper investigates its origins and suggests that it is perhaps now time to move on.

[Mental interiority in the early-modern age. The "Cartesian theater"]

This paper looks into the notion of mental interiority in the early-modern age and, more specifically, into the Cartesian conception of the mind as an "inner theater". The main claim emphasizes a close connexion at work between the representative theory of the mind, associated with internalism, on the one hand, and a "neuropsychological" view on the other hand. Cartesian mentalism, in so far as it is based upon a disjunction between representation and resemblance, can therefore not be separated from the general project, already at work in the Dioptrique, of an intra-cerebral localization of the mental.

Multiple concurrent thoughts: The meaning and developmental neuropsychology of working memory

Working memory can be described as the small amount of information held in a readily accessible state, available to help in the completion of cognitive tasks. There has been considerable confusion among researchers regarding the definition of working memory, which can be attributed to the difficulty of reconciling descriptions from working memory researchers with very different theoretical orientations. Here I review theories of working memory and some of the main issues in the field, discuss current behavioral and neuropsychological research that can address these issues, and consider the implications for cognitive development.

Hugo Karl Liepmann and apraxia

John Hughlings Jackson (1835-1911) first clearly described apraxia in 1861, though he did not provide the specific name. Apraxias are subtle motor disorders in which there is an interruption of the organisation of movement mainly located in the left hemisphere. Hugo Karl Liepmann (1863-1925) was responsible for their elucidation, distinguishing ideomotor, limb-kinetic or innervatory, and ideational apraxias that affect distinct central associational areas of the cortex with characteristic clinical results. This notion was later expanded and clarified by Geschwind's 'disconnection syndromes'. This article summarises the history of this important and common pattern of motor dysfunction.

Poetry and the brain: Cajal's conjectures on the psychology of writers

In 1902, Santiago Ramón y Cajal (1852-1934), the father of modern neuroscience and a 1906 Nobel laureate, contributed a preface to a book of poems by his fellow countryman, Spanish poet and dramatist Marcos Zapata (1844-1914). In that uncustomary-for his neuroscience followers-essay, Cajal unfolds his ideas on the literary genres of drama and comedy in relation to the workings of the human mind and sentiments. The same text was reissued almost half a century later in Spain and in Argentina under the title The Psychology of Artists. We present an English version of Cajal's essay, which may be of interest to both humanists and biologists, and which further denotes the celebrated neuroanatomist's attempt at understanding the mystery of the human mind.

Grasping at ontological straws: overcoming reductionism in the Advaita Vedānta-Neuroscience dialogue

Contemporary neuropsychology reveals that the parietal lobe contains neurons that are specifically attuned to the act of grasping and this act may be fundamental to the establishment of the phenomenal boundaries between subject and object. Furthermore, alterations to this process, such as the hypoactivation of this region during meditation or the hyperactivation associated with schizophrenia, may eliminate or confuse, respectively, the phenomenal boundaries between subject and object. Traversing disciplines, the Advaita Vedānta school of Hinduism traces some of its key terms for subject and object to the verbal root grah, to grasp. The subject is literally the grasper. Furthermore, the practice of asparśa yoga, the yoga of no-touch, is aimed at stopping, hypoactivating, the grasping process in order to transcend all subject-object boundaries. This paper will argue that while we have not uncovered an identity of thought, we have uncovered a confluence of ideas between these two disciplines. We will see that this confluence of ideas has not pitted the believer against the critic-not forced us into the great reductionism debate that has dominated so much of the interchange between religious studies and the sciences. This case study will illuminate some of the methodological ways around this reductionism battle and also the boundaries of both disciplines for the intellectual benefit of each.