A series to help you understand
how your amazing brain works
THE
Get smart series
Historically, therefore, information about our brains mostly came
from looking at patients who had injured their brains, or from
studying the brains of people who showed unusual behaviours in
life, after they had died.
In the case of brain injuries, doctors and scientists would look at
the effect that the injury to the specific part of the brain had had on
a person, and use this information to draw conclusions about the
function and purpose of that part of the brain.
On the other hand, in patients who displayed unusual behaviours in
life, doctors and scientists would record details about the
behaviours while the patient was alive, and then, after the patient
died, they would dissect (cut apart) the person’s brain. This would
allow them to see if there were parts of the brain that were missing
or looked different in these people. From this, they could then work
out which parts of the brain were causing the problem, and
therefore, which parts of the brain were responsible for which
functions in other people.
Here, we look at a few of these cases to give you an idea how
scientists in the past began to develop a more advanced
understanding of our brains.The brain has always been a mystery, and
even today, scientists continue to dedicate
their lives to understanding the workings of
this fantastically complex organ. Today, brain
imaging with high-tech scanners that look
at not only the structures of certain parts of
the brain, but also which parts of the brain
are used for specific activities, gives us lots
of information about brain function. Hundreds
of years ago, this kind of technology just didnot exist.