The Discovery of Motor Cortex and its Background

In 1870 Gustav Fritsch and Edvard Hitzig showed that electrical stimulation of the cerebral cortex of a dog produced movements. This was a crucial event in the development of modern neuroscience because it was the first good experimental evidence for a) cerebral cortex involvement in motor function, b) the electrical excitability of the cortex, c) topographic representation in the brain, and d) localization of function in different regions of the cerebral cortex. This paper discusses their experiment and some developments in the previous two centuries that led to it including the ideas of Thomas Willis and Emanuel Swedenborg, the widespread interest in electricity and the localizations of function of Franz Joseph Gall, John Hughlings Jackson, and Paul Broca. We also consider the subsequent study of the motor cortex by David Ferrier and others.     

The discovery of motor cortex and its background

In 1870 Gustav Fritsch and Edvard Hitzig showed that electrical stimulation of the cerebral cortex of a dog produced movements. This was a crucial event in the development of modern neuroscience because it was the first good experimental evidence for a) cerebral cortex involvement in motor function, b) the electrical excitability of the cortex, c) topographic representation in the brain, and d) localization of function in different regions of the cerebral cortex. This paper discusses their experiment and some developments in the previous two centuries that led to it including the ideas of Thomas Willis and Emanuel Swedenborg, the widespread interest in electricity and the localizations of function of Franz Joseph Gall, John Hughlings Jackson, and Paul Broca. We also consider the subsequent study of the motor cortex by David Ferrier and others.     

Anglo-American Interest in Cerebral Physiology

This paper shows the relative influence of Ferrier and Hitzig on American and British interest in cerebral physiology in the early 1870s. Although Hitzig published three years before Ferrier, Ferrier was more influential. Evidence comes from multiple sources: numerical trends in citations to Fritsch and Hitzig in British and American publications showed an increase after Ferrier's work. Hitzig's work was primarily discussed in the context of Ferrier's work. Ferrier's work was more impressive than Hitzig's work to American and British contemporaries. Ferrier's work was applicable to medical issues. The secular press failed to popularize Hitzig's work. Was national pride evident?     

Cortical epileptogenesis and David Ferrier

There was an increasing medical interest in the localization of representation of function in the cerebral cortex after Broca in 1861 identified a cortical area that appeared responsible for expressive speech. By the late 1860s, John Hughlings Jackson—based on clinico-pathological correlations mainly in persons with focal motor seizures—had reasoned that contralateral somatic motor function was represented in another area of the cortex. This localization was supported by Fritsch and Hitzig (1870) in experimental cortical stimulation studies in dogs. These authors also reported producing events resembling contralateral motor convulsing in their animals. Their work, and Jackson’s ideas, prompted David Ferrier, in Great Britain, to begin a program of cerebral cortical stimulation studies in various vertebrate species, trying to locate cortical sites of representation of functions other than expressive speech and motor activity. In his initial report of his investigations (1873), he noted that appropriately sited Faradic stimulation evoked immediate or delayed contralateral focal motor seizures, some of which evolved into generalized convulsions. On this basis he reasoned that focal motor and generalized seizures were expressions of the same disorder; that nearly all epilepsies originated in the cerebral cortex and not in the lower brain stem, as hitherto thought; and that the clinical pattern of epileptic seizure phenomenology depended on the function of the cortical site of origin and the extent and direction of spread of seizure activity in the brain. He not only provided experimental verification for Jackson’s reasoning about epileptic seizure mechanisms but expressed the ideas a good deal more clearly than Jackson ever managed to do. Ferrier’s achievement in this regard has tended to escape notice, lost sight of because of the great importance of his investigations into localization of cerebral function.     

Eduard Hitzig's experiences in the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871): the case of Joseph Masseau

It is well known that Fritsch and Hitzig published the results of their experiments on cortical stimulation in 1870, the year in which the Franco-Prussian War (FPW) broke out. Several tall stories are found about Hitzig's role in the FPW; stories that have not been well documented. During this war, he worked at the military hospital in Nancy, where he was allowed to admit to his ward soldiers with head wounds. He made a close observation of the 20-year-old French soldier Joseph Masseau, who suffered from a right-sided cerebral abscess following a gunshot wound sustained during the Loire campaign on December 10, 1870 and was looked after in the military hospital of Nancy in January and February 1871. Hitzig related the clinical and autopsy observations to his recent experimental findings. A translation into English of part of the case report is provided.     

The electrical excitability of the brain: toward the emergence of an experiment

In 1870, Eduard Hitzig and Gustav Fritsch performed experiments on dogs by which they were able to produce movement through electrical stimulation of specific parts of the cerebral cortex. Contemporaries regarded the experiment as a milestone in the controversially discussed issue of cerebral localization of functions even though this experiment came as a surprise to the community of experimental physiologists who had rejected localization for several decades after the antiphrenological work of the physiologist Pierre Flourens. In this article, I will argue that the context in which this experiment emerged was not so much the French localization debate of the 1860s but rather practical demands in clinical medicine, notably in electrotherapy. At the time of the experiment, Hitzig worked as a medical practitioner in Berlin and was interested in an anatomical and physiological explanation of the specific symptoms of one of his patients. The unpredictable outcome of this interest was the discovery of the electrical excitability of the cortex. Whereas experimental physiologists dominated the discussion on cerebral localization in Germany before 1870, the situation shifted after the publication of Fritsch and Hitzig's paper. Concrete medical necessities forced the discussion about localization and it was mainly due to the authority of clinical physicians that the localization of mental qualities in the brain became a cornerstone of brain research.     

An American Controversy about the Localization of Cutaneous Sensory Regions and their Relation to Motor Regions

Three American neurologists (C. K. Mills, C. L. Dana, and M. A. Starr) explored the anatomical limits of the motor and tactile systems in the brain from 1884 to 1895. Their papers and critiques of one another show contemporary knowledge, limits of their thinking, and difficulties deciding between alternatives. The issue for them was whether there were separate sensory and motor regions or whether there was a combined sensory-motor region. They based their localization arguments on clinical and laboratory findings and on the conclusions of H. Munk and D. Ferrier. There is a discussion about why differences were unresolved.     

An American controversy about the localization of cutaneous sensory regions and their relation to motor regions

Three American neurologists (C. K. Mills, C. L. Dana, and M. A. Starr) explored the anatomical limits of the motor and tactile systems in the brain from 1884 to 1895. Their papers and critiques of one another show contemporary knowledge, limits of their thinking, and difficulties deciding between alternatives. The issue for them was whether there were separate sensory and motor regions or whether there was a combined sensory-motor region. They based their localization arguments on clinical and laboratory findings and on the conclusions of H. Munk and D. Ferrier. There is a discussion about why differences were unresolved.     

Cerebral automatism, the brain, and the soul in Bram Stoker's Dracula

Neither literary critics nor historians of science have acknowledged the extent to which Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897) is indebted to late-Victorian neurologists, particularly David Ferrier, John Burdon-Sanderson, Thomas Huxley, and William Carpenter. Stoker came from a family of distinguished Irish physicians and obtained an M.A. in mathematics from Trinity College, Dublin. His personal library contained volumes on physiology, and his composition notes for Dracula include typewritten pages on somnambulism, trance states, and cranial injuries. Stoker used his knowledge of neurology extensively in Dracula. The automatic behaviors practiced by Dracula and his vampiric minions, such as somnambulism and hypnotic trance states, reflect theories about reflex action postulated by Ferrier and other physiologists. These scientists traced such automatic behaviors to the brain stem and suggested that human behavior was "determined" through the reflex action of the body and brain-a position that threatened to undermine entrenched beliefs in free will and the immortal soul. I suggest that Stoker's vampire protagonist dramatizes the pervasive late-nineteenth-century fear that human beings are soulless machines motivated solely by physiological factors.     

Reading with the Occultists: Arthur Machen,A. E. Waite,and the Ecstasies of Popular Fiction

My article recovers a forgotten moment in the history of popular fiction criticism – the late Victorian advent of what I term occultic literary criticism – to challenge the persistent anxiety thesis that continues to dominate fin-de-siècle studies. In the late 1890s, the close friends, writers, bibliophiles, and, for varying amounts of time, practising occultists Arthur Machen and A. E. Waite used their literary criticism to champion the ecstatic occult potential of mass-circulated popular fiction, insisting that the penny dreadful, the newspaper story, and the popular picaresque as exemplified in Charles Dickens’s The Pickwick Papers (1836–37) represented coded versions of ancient mystery tradition rituals. The cheap popular texts could offer to readers, writers, and collectors the kind of joyous direct encounter with the unseen world that sacred texts no longer could. The pair’s conviction that ecstatic occult initiation was just as, if not more, attainable through popular exoteric texts as through their restricted esoteric counterparts offers an important corrective to contemporary understandings of both the late-Victorian reception of popular fiction and of the reach and constituency of the occult revival.     

Sermon,preacher and society in the middle ages

Over the past twenty-five years, studies produced on medieval preaching and sermons have grown so considerably that they now constitute a discipline known as sermon studies. The discipline incorporates various methodologies which include exegesis, liturgy, theology, social history, cultural history, literary criticism, textual criticism, and art history. Therefore, this essay can only be a sampling of some of the literature which has recently appeared. The essay is ordered under the headings: ‘sermon’, ‘preacher’, and ‘society’. The section on sermons isolates methodological issues which form the basis of sermon studies. It outlines the criteria scholars have established to use medieval sermons as an historical tool. The second section investigates the diversity of preachers and considers their role as educators. The third section on society considers those studies which have examined sermons as sources which reflect as well as influence moral and intellectual tendencies in the Middle Ages.     

Sermon,preacher and society in the middle ages

Over the past twenty-five years, studies produced on medieval preaching and sermons have grown so considerably that they now constitute a discipline known as sermon studies. The discipline incorporates various methodologies which include exegesis, liturgy, theology, social history, cultural history, literary criticism, textual criticism, and art history. Therefore, this essay can only be a sampling of some of the literature which has recently appeared. The essay is ordered under the headings: ‘sermon’, ‘preacher’, and ‘society’. The section on sermons isolates methodological issues which form the basis of sermon studies. It outlines the criteria scholars have established to use medieval sermons as an historical tool. The second section investigates the diversity of preachers and considers their role as educators. The third section on society considers those studies which have examined sermons as sources which reflect as well as influence moral and intellectual tendencies in the Middle Ages.     

The Unveiled Apple: Ethnicity,Gender, and the Limits of Inter-discursive Interpretation of Iranian Contemporary Art

In the past two decades, Iranian contemporary art has been eagerly embraced by international art venues. The transportation of artworks from Tehran to mostly western European and North American cultural centers entails inter-discursive translations that will render them legible for their reception in a new context. This paper argues that bound up in these translations are performative acts of language that label these artworks as markers of ethnic alterity, unexplored localities and most of the time associates them with issues of gender and femininity (and therefore limited to the vocabulary of “veil,” “plight of women” and “sexual inequality”). Looking at a seven-minute piece of video-art by Ghazaleh Hedayat entitled Eve's Apple (2006), the article examines this predicament and the possibilities for the artists to circumvent it. It argues that Hedayat's video enables an observation of the performative dominance of Western discourses of art history that mark the limits of inter-discursive interpretation in disciplines such as art history and art criticism.     

U.S. anti-abortion ideology on the move: Mobile crisis pregnancy centers as unruly,unmappable, and ungovernable

Crisis pregnancy centers—anti-abortion non-profits that masquerade as abortion clinics—are increasingly using mobile units to expand their geographical and political reach. In this article, the first to consider mobile crisis pregnancy centers, we examine the methodological, epistemological, and political challenges that mobile units raise for scholars and activists alike. The mobile nature of on-the-go crisis pregnancy centers makes them difficult to both map and regulate. Taking these challenges as a starting point, we reflect on what we learned from our failure to map mobile crisis pregnancy centers. We first outline how mobile crisis pregnancy centers—the epitome of the wild, ungovernable, and unruly—call into question the glorification of these concepts in feminist and queer studies. We also suggest that mobile crisis pregnancy centers trouble the possibility of thinking feminist and political geography separately, as well as the positive affects associated with mobility in discussions of reproductive mobilities. We close with a qualitative analysis of mobile crisis pregnancy centers’ online presence, examining the particular concerns that their mobility raises in terms of race, class, and place.     

The Tulane Electrical Brain Stimulation Program a historical case study in medical ethics

In 1950 physicians at Tulane University School of Medicine began a program of research on the use of electrical brain stimulation that would span three decades and involve approximately 100 patients. Initially, electrical brain stimulation was used to treat of schizophrenia, but later it was applied to a variety of other conditions. Throughout its history the Tulane research was well publicized in both the professional and lay literature, and for almost twenty years, with rare exception, these accounts were laudatory. However, in the early 1970s this work began to draw sharp public criticism. Despite its public and controversial nature, the Tulane electrical brain stimulation program has received relatively little attention from historians. This review recounts the history of the Tulane program with particular emphasis on the ethical propriety of the work. Factors that shaped the historical context in which the Tulane experiments were conducted are discussed.     

Traditions of learning around the English Battle of the Books

This article calls for a reassessment of the Battle of the Books by arguing that the dispute did not simply oppose imitators of the ancients and supporters of modern critical scholarship, but that many scholars and critics were also attempting to support the authority of the ancients through their philological methods. A deep undercurrent of concern about the methods of philology can be traced in the development of biblical and patristic scholarship in the late seventeenth century. The article further emphasizes how the satirists (Swift especially) were aware of this strand of criticism, and yet how they hid their debt to it in order to portray textual criticism as a whole as a pedantic exercise. The Battle of the Books should therefore not be seen as a straightforward opposition between “supporters of the ancients” and “supporters of the moderns,” but as contention between doctrine and reason.     

Cerebral Automatism,the Brain,and the Soul in Bram Stoker’s Dracula

Neither literary critics nor historians of science have acknowledged the extent to which Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) is indebted to late-Victorian neurologists, particularly David Ferrier, John Burdon-Sanderson, Thomas Huxley, and William Carpenter. Stoker came from a family of distinguished Irish physicians and obtained an M.A. in mathematics from Trinity College, Dublin. His personal library contained volumes on physiology, and his composition notes for Dracula include typewritten pages on somnambulism, trance states, and cranial injuries.

Stoker used his knowledge of neurology extensively in Dracula. The automatic behaviors practiced by Dracula and his vampiric minions, such as somnambulism and hypnotic trance states, reflect theories about reflex action postulated by Ferrier and other physiologists. These scientists traced such automatic behaviors to the brain stem and suggested that human behavior was “determined” through the reflex action of the body and brain—a position that threatened to undermine entrenched beliefs in free will and the immortal soul. I suggest that Stoker’s vampire protagonist dramatizes the pervasive late-nineteenth-century fear that human beings are soulless machines motivated solely by physiological factors.     

The influence of climatic change on the Late Bronze Age Collapse and the Greek Dark Ages

Between the 13th and 11th centuries BCE, most Greek Bronze Age Palatial centers were destroyed and/or abandoned. The following centuries were typified by low population levels. Data from oxygen-isotope speleothems, stable carbon isotopes, alkenone-derived sea surface temperatures, and changes in warm-species dinocysts and formanifera in the Mediterranean indicate that the Early Iron Age was more arid than the preceding Bronze Age. A sharp increase in Northern Hemisphere temperatures preceded the collapse of Palatial centers, a sharp decrease occurred during their abandonment. Mediterranean Sea surface temperatures cooled rapidly during the Late Bronze Age, limiting freshwater flux into the atmosphere and thus reducing precipitation over land. These climatic changes could have affected Palatial centers that were dependent upon high levels of agricultural productivity. Declines in agricultural production would have made higher-density populations in Palatial centers unsustainable. The ‘Greek Dark Ages’ that followed occurred during prolonged arid conditions that lasted until the Roman Warm Period.     

The importance of being Ernest: a Comment on Riga and Hall

Ernest Gellner's work on nationalism continues to draw a mix of both admiration and criticism. In a recent article, Riga and Hall find fault with a new line of criticism of Gellner's theory of nationalism that I introduced in a series of articles in this journal. They claim that I have merely repeated a well‐known criticism of Gellner – that his work is functionalist. This would be convenient for their arguments if it were true. While I would agree, and have explicitly acknowledged, that there is nothing new in the charge of functionalism, I do not take a functionalist line on Gellner. Functionalism is not the issue. My work shows that his theory of nationalism is plagued with problems that have little or nothing to do with functionalism.     

Globalization of the animation industry: multi-scalar linkages of six animation production centers

This paper examines the change in animation production over time and analyzes the different scales of internal and external linkages among six animation production centers. Four types of producers were identified based on their roles in the animation industry and their multi-scalar linkages were investigated for similarities and differences. Several factors including production costs, local skills, government policy and domestic markets were found to affect the growth of new production centers. High value-capture occurs mostly in production centers where tacit knowledge is created. The governance of each animation production center was found to have evolved based on its unique development path within the industry’s global value chain.