Mapping a Behavioral Cerebral Space

Abstract

My topic illustrates the fact that in neuropsychology, as in any science, we cannot afford to let our empirical advances much outstrip our theoretical models because our theoretical models constrain the range of questions that we ask. So we continually need to refine and reformulate these models. In neuropsychology, the early models were simplistic. They allocated various brain areas to various supposed functions and stipulated particular connections between them (Geschwind, 1975). The effort became increasingly ambitious over successive decades, culminating around World War II in the contribution of Oscar Vogt, a neuroanatomist who felt able to show the exact neurons which bestowed on one person outstanding mathematical ability, on another, a flair for musical composition. Nobody has achieved such precision since then. In fact, there has been a reaction against such pretensions especially in North America, because they were, like most pretensions, Europtan. The 1950s were lean times for neuropsychology even in Europe. Three men, Luria, Zangwill and Hécaen, kept the science going. Things were so bad in North America that I remember when interning in Bellevue Hospital in 1958 being taught by Moms Bender, no newcomer to brain functions, that of any symptom, all you can reasonably ask is: Is its origin in the head? Morris Bender's distinguished colleague, Hans-Lukas Teuber, was himself oppressed by this antipathy to localization. Oliver Zangwill pointed out to me that Teuber, who was bilingual, would be localizationalist when he spoke German, but would speak in terms of mass-action when he used English.