Vision and the dimensions of nerve fibers

Vision provided the obvious source of determining the dimensions of nerve fibers when suitable achromatic microscopes were directed at neural tissue in the 1830s. The earlier microscopes of Hooke and Leeuwenhoek were unable to resolve such small structures adequately. However, it was not Hooke's microscope that led to an estimate of the dimensions of nerve fibers, but his experiments on the limits of visual resolution; he determined that a separation of one minute of arc was the minimum that could normally be seen. Descartes had earlier speculated that the retina consisted of the ends of fibers of the optic nerve, and that their size defined the limits of what could be seen. Estimates of the diameters of nerve fibers were made on the basis of human visual acuity by Porterfield in 1738; he calculated the diameters of nerve fibers in the retina as one 7,200th part of an inch (0.0035 mm), based on the resolution of one minute as the minimum visible. In the same year, Jurin questioned the reliability of such estimates because of variations in visual resolution with different stimuli.     

Camillo Golgi on the Structure of the Hippocampus

Golgi's only paper on the pes Hippocampi major was published in 1883 and then reprinted and translated a number of times. In it he stated that the fascia dentata provided the best information available to date on how nerve fibers and nerve cells are related. Based on the revolutionary silver chromate method he had introduced a decade earlier, Golgi described two sources of axons from the fascia dentata: one consisted of direct axons from the granule cells, and the other consisted of indirect axons from a diffuse neural net or reticulum that was generated from collaterals of the direct axons. The same basic arrangement was described for Ammon's horn, but neither was illustrated, and it is important to bear in mind that this work was published before the ‘neuron doctrine’ and ‘law of functional polarity’ were elaborated in the 1890s.     

Galen's ideas on neurological function

Galen was the leading physician of the Roman empire during the last half of the second century. Unlike some of his predecessors, Galen concluded that the brain controlled cognition and willed action. The initial evidence for this doctrine was that the brain was the site of termination of all of the five senses: touch, taste, smell, sight, and hearing. Galen presumed that the information from these five senses was organized by a part of the brain that generated a concept of an object common to all senses; this part of the brain he considered to be the area of common sense. Galen thought that he could differentiate sensory from motor nerves (not nerve fibers) by palpation. Sensory nerves were soft because they needed to be impressed with the essence of the object seen, heard, felt, smelled, or tasted. Motor nerve fibers were very hard because they needed to carry the force of the will from the brain to the muscles. Strong willed people had especially firm motor nerve fibers; hence, the modern term that a person with great bravery has 'nerves of steel'. Galen considered that common sense, cognition, and memory were functions of the brain. Personality and emotion were not generated by the brain, but rather by the body as a whole (or perhaps by the heart and liver). Galen's studies of respiration and of the recurrent laryngeal nerve solidified the knowledge that the brain, not the chest, was the site of the rational power that guides human behavior. This doctrine has continued from Galen's time to the present.     

Sigmund Freud's Contribution to the History of the Neuronal Cytoskeleton

In the summers of 1879 and 1881, while Freud was a research student in Ernst von Brücke's laboratory at the Institute of Physiology at the University of Vienna, he carried out an important though seldom remembered investigation on the internal structure of nerve fibers and cells. His contribution to this field is here examined in the context of the 19th-century debate regarding the existence of neurofibrils and of present views on the cytoskeleton. Freud was able to discern separate fine fibrils following straight courses within the nerve fibers, as well as concentric loops of striae surrounding the nuclei and converging towards the processes of the cell bodies in crayfish nervous tissue. He thus confirmed and extended observations made by Robert Remak almost 40 years earlier, which had remained controversial. Electron microscopy of the crustacean nervous system confirmed Freud's main points, which in turn vindicated those of Remak. Both researchers were looking at small bundles of microtubules, and thus they were among the first to picture the lacy intracellular framework that future cell biologists would call the cytoskeleton.     

Camillo Golgi on the structure of the hippocampus

Golgi's only paper on the pes Hippocampi major was published in 1883 and then reprinted and translated a number of times. In it he stated that the fascia dentata provided the best information available to date on how nerve fibers and nerve cells are related. Based on the revolutionary silver chromate method he had introduced a decade earlier, Golgi described two sources of axons from the fascia dentata: one consisted of direct axons from the granule cells, and the other coonsisted of indirect axons from a diffuse neural net or reticulum that was generated from collaterals of the direct axons. The same basic arrangement was described for Ammon's horn, but neither was illustrated, and it is important to bear in mind that this work was published before the "neuron doctrine" and "law of functional polarity" were elaborated in the 1890's.     

Robert Hooke und die frühe Geschichte der Federwaage

A large number of the so-called electronic balances, for example those using wire strain gauges, are based on the elastic deformation of solid materials, and on the electrical measurement of the resulting changes in length. Such instruments must therefore be grouped into the class of spring balances. The spring balance operates within the limits of proportionality according to the law discovered by and named after Robert Hooke. No precise information about the spring balance can be found so far in the literature about balances: it is assumed that it was invented before 1700, without knowledge of the name of the inventor. As the result of a literature research it is shown that Robert Hooke found experimentally in 1676 with „ut tensio sic vis”︁ not only the physical principles which led to the law of elasticity: he also drew practical conclusions from it, and in the treatise De potentia restitutiva, published 1678, he described the most important types of spring balances. Experiments carried out by him to demonstrate the reduction of gravity with increasing altitude by using such a balance led, however, to a negative result because of its lack of sensitivity. Further developments for more than 100 years were necessary, until the spring balance come into more general application.     

Visual images in Luigi Galvani's path to animal electricity

The scientific endeavor that led Luigi Galvani to his hypothesis of "animal electricity," i.e., of an electricity present in a condition of disequilibrium between the interior and the exterior of excitable animal fibers, is reviewed here with particular emphasis to the role played by visual images in Galvani's path of discovery. In 1791 Galvani formulated his model of neuromuscular physiology on the base of the image of a muscle and a nerve fiber together as in a "minute animal Leyden jar." This was the last instance of a series of physical models that accompanied Galvani's experimental efforts in the search of a theory capable of accounting for the electric nature of nerve conduction in spite of the many objections formulated in the eighteenth century against a possible role of electricity in animal physiology.     

Sigmund Freud's contribution to the history of the neuronal cytoskeleton

In the summers of 1879 and 1881, while Freud was a research student in Ernst von Brücke's laboratory at the Institute of Physiology at the University of Vienna, he carried out an important though seldom remembered investigation on the internal structure of nerve fibers and cells. His contribution to this field is here examined in the context of the 19th-century debate regarding the existence of neurofibrils and of present views on the cytoskeleton. Freud was able to discern separate fine fibrils following straight courses within the nerve fibers, as well as concentric loops of striae surrounding the nuclei and converging towards the processes of the cell bodies in crayfish nervous tissue. He thus confirmed and extended observations made by Robert Remak almost 40 years earlier, which had remained controversial. Electron microscopy of the crustacean nervous system confirmed Freud's main points, which in turn vindicated those of Remak. Both researchers were looking at small bundles of microtubules, and thus they were among the first to picture the lacy intracellular framework that future cell biologists would call the cytoskeleton.     

The Bloody Skirt of Settlement: Arthur Vogan and Anti-Slavery in 1890s Australia

This article concerns Arthur Vogan's novel The Black Police, published in 1890. In his book Vogan drew upon an affective global language of suffering that combined appeals to his experience as an eyewitness of the frontier with popular stereotypes drawn from British and American abolitionist precedents. These sources included Uncle Tom's Cabin and popular newspaper commentary on Queensland frontier violence that had circulated earlier in Australia and Britain. The reception of Vogan's novel was mixed: while it reached a wide audience, it failed to prompt official action, and local and British reviewers charged him with sensationalism and ‘embellishment’. Vogan defended his work vehemently, asserting it was based on fact. Reviewers' scepticism stemmed, however, from Vogan's uneasy blend of realist narrative, grounded in eyewitness testimony, and the popular and sensational fictional and visual conventions he deployed. At the end of a period of intense frontier conflict in Queensland over the preceding three decades, Vogan's novel of protest and its ambivalent reception point to the limits of humanitarian influence within an Australian, intercolonial, and ultimately imperial framework.     

“You've Got to Work on This Axon”: J. Z. Young and Squid Giant Axon Preparations in 20th-Century Neurobiology**

Employing and extending Hans-Jörg Rheinberger's analytical concept of epistemic things, this essay proposes one reason why squid giant axons, unusually large invertebrate nerve fibers, had such great impacts on twentieth-century neurobiology. The 1930s characterizations of these axons by John Zachary Young reshaped prevailing assumptions about nerve cells as epistemic things, I argue. Specifically, Young's preparations of these axons, which consisted of fibers attached to laboratory technologies, highlighted similarities between giant axons and more familiar ones via lines of comparative study common to aquatic biology. Young's work convinced other biologists that the squid giant fibers were, in fact, axons, despite their unusual fused (syncytial) structures, thereby promoting further studies, such as intracellular measurements, made possible by the fiber's size. Tracing direct relations between preparations of squid axons and broader interpretations of neurons as epistemic things, this paper renders an actors’ category, “preparations,” into an analytical one. In turn, it offers glimpses into how aquatic organisms shaped twentieth-century neurobiology and how local experiments can drive broader, disciplinary changes.     

The Obscenity Bargain: Ralph Ginzburg for Fanny Hill

The next‐to‐the‐last witness at the July 1968 hearings on the nomination of Abe Fortas to replace Earl Warren as Chief Justice was James Clancy. Along with another attorney, Charles Keating, who would later gain infamy in the savings and loan scandal of the 1980s, Clancy appeared on behalf of Citizens for Decent Literature, an anti‐smut organization that had filed amicus briefs supporting censorship “as essential to the development of good family living” ¹ in the Supreme Court's important obscenity decisions. ² Clancy asserted that everyone should see the materials Fortas had held were entitled to First Amendment protection, and so he had assembled a thirty‐minute compilation of them for the Judiciary Committee's viewing.     

Policy Characteristics,Patterns of Politics,and the Minimum Wage: Toward a Typology of Redistributive Policies

The central hypothesis of all policy typologies is that distinctively different patterns of politics can be identified for different types of public policy issues. Lowi identified three different policy types, which he termed distributive, regulative, and redistributive, each of which triggers a distinctively different pattern of political behavior. Unfortunately, Lowi's categories were inductively derived and ambiguously defined, leading to disagreements over how to categorize particular policies. Hayes built on Lowi's seminal effort, deriving Lowi's three policy categories from two underlying dimensions and identifying additional categories Lowi's original formulation had missed. Using the minimum wage issue as an example, this article will identify a critical deficiency in both these typologies. While Hayes' typology defines the boundaries between policy categories more precisely than Lowi's, neither typology is equipped to deal with variations in political patterns occurring within a particular cell. As this article will show, the minimum wage issue, although consistently redistributive in Hayes' terms, has manifested three very different patterns of politics at different points in time. Accordingly, a typology of redistributive policies will be advanced to account for these variations in the redistributive politics of the minimum wage.     

Neuro-anniversary 2002

Abstract

The impetus to pursue the study of ocular motility in sleeping adults was derived from a previous study conducted by the author on infants. He noted through visual observation alone that there was an approximate twenty minute interlude of complete ocular quiescence during each hour of sleep. This period of quiescence was termed ‘No Eye Movement Period’ or ‘N.E.M. Period’, and it was the intent of the author to ascertain what effect age would have on the distribution of N.E.M. periods during sleep. In the latter part of 1951, the first continuous all‐night recording of ocular motility in sleep using a combined EEG and EOG technique was conducted on the author's eight year old son. Instead of N.E.M. Periods, what he found were approximately twenty minute periods of vigorous ocular activity including saccadic‐like eye movements. Although he ultimately termed these epochs as ‘REM Periods’, his initial intent was to name them ‘Jerky Eye Movement Periods’ or ‘JEM Periods’. Ironically, some three decades later he found that a mathematical measure of jerkiness was a better discriminator than velocity in distinguishing REMs from waking saccades. Kleitman, who was the thesis advisor, played the role of skeptic during the REM discovery and demanded unassailable proof of the existence of REM. His feelings had to be ambivalent inasmuch as the REM state, with its concurrent activated cerebral cortex, negated his own theory that sleep was a completely passive phenomenon.     

Verzeitlichungs- und Historisierungstendenzen in der frühen Geologie und Paläontologie

Steno described in 1669 geological sections which were interpreted as the result of a series of earlier events. Steno used actuogeological methods. This was the first step towards temporalizing nature. Steno was succeeded by a lot of other researchers from different European countries. It is amazing to see, that “actualism” was widespread during the 18th century. The next step was the discovery that fossils are extinct beings (Ray, Hooke and others). Using methods of comparing anatomy W. Hunter (forerunner of Cuvier) could prove in 1769 that the Mastodon is an extinct vertebrate. The work of Soulavie in France (1780) is stressed. He held in his hand the key for solving the problem of index-fossils. About 1800 the importance of fossils for stratigraphy and describing a history of the earth was recognized. Theories and hypotheses were needed to explain the fossil documents (strange shells in older strata and higher developed mammals in younger strata). All these theories couldn't propose a feasible mechanism for the change of beings during the history of the earth. But it could be said, that all fossils proove a history of life and the earth i. e. a progressive development in one sense, a development which is not reversible.     

Hallucinations and Pathological Visual Perceptions in Maupassant's Fantastical Short Stories- A Neurological Approach

Maupassant excelled as a realist writer of the nineteenth century, with fantastical short stories being an outstanding example of his literary genius. We have analysed four of his fantastical stories from a neurological point of view. In “Le Horla,” his masterpiece, we have found nightmares, sleep paralysis, a hemianopic pattern of loss and recovery of vision, and palinopsia. In “Qui sait” and in “La main” there is also an illusory movement of the objects in the visual field, although in a dreamlike complex pattern. In “Lui,” autoscopy and hypnagogic hallucinations emerge as fantastical key elements.

The writer suffered from severe migraine and neurosyphilis involving the optic nerve, which led to his death by general paralysis of the insane (GPI). Visual loss and visual hallucinations affected the author in his last years, before a delirant state confined him to a nursing home. Our original hypothesis, which stated that he could have translated his sensorial experiences coming from this source to his works, had to be revised by analyzing some of his earliest works, notably “Le Docteur Héraclius Gloss” and “La main d’écorché” (1875). We found hallucinatory symptoms, adopting the form of autoscopy and other elaborated visual misperceptions, in stories written at age 25, when Maupassant was allegedly healthy. Therefore, we hypothesize that they may be related to his hypersensitive disposition, assuming that no pathology is necessary to experience such vivid experiences. In addition, Maupassant's abuse of drugs, as illustrated in “Rêves,” could have provided an additional element to outline his painstaking visual depictions. All these factors, in addition to his up-to-date neurological knowledge and attendance at Charcot's lectures at “La Salpêtrière,” armed the author for repetitive and enriched hallucinatory experiences, which were transferred relentlessly into his works from the beginning of his career.     

The Responsibility of Science for the Future of Mankind

Abstract

Science and technology have brought immense benefits to man, yet through them he has become divorced from nature and he has failed to understand them. Adverse effects have been deliberately hidden, and when they became obvious, have turned science into a scapegoat. Scientists are here presented as unconcerned with the social consequences of their work, whether it affects industry or politics. The endless scientific future is now seen to have strict limits, and, the author proposes, scientists must devote themselves to the problems of mankind's future. Above all, scientists must explain their work in a language which all can understand, so that man can feel again at ease in his scientific civilization.     

Arthur's refusal to eat: ritual and control in the romance feast

Arthur's refusal to begin feasting before he has seen a marvel or heard a tale of adventure is a recurring motif in medieval romance. Previous comment on this ritual has suggested that the source for such a taboo on eating may be found in earlier narratives in the Celtic languages. This paper argues that, although the ritual almost certainly originates in pre-chivalric society, romance authors adapted and developed it to reflect the courtly-chivalric preoccupations of their own world. Arthur's ritual gesture may be seen as a means of containing and controlling both interior moral threats and exterior physical peril, and is intimately connected to the courtly conception of the feast. This study draws on the evidence of religious writing and courtesy manuals and explores some highly-developed treatments of the motif in romance in order to suggest that literary engagements with Arthur's refusal to eat have much to say about contemporary ideas of ritual and reality as mediated through the symbolically-charged arena of the medieval feast.