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                Phrenology: the History of Brain Localization

                         Renato M.E. Sabbatini, PhD

           Today, even the least informed high school student knows that
           many functions of the brain are carried out by particular
structures, and not by others. For example, the external part of the brain,
called cortex, has regions which are responsible for different functions,
such as the perception of vision and hearing, the control of movement and
speech, as well as the higher mental faculties (cognition, planning,
reasoning, etc.). This doctrine, which has been proved over and over again
in this era where sophisticated equipments, supported by computers, are able
to visualize with pinpoint precision where a given function is being
performed in the brain, is called cerebral localizationism.

But this was not so in the final years of the eighteen century, the century
of Illumination. Knowledge about the brain was scanty and dominated by
non-scientific speculations. Objective experimentation with animals was
still rare, and one the most powerful methods of inferring brain function,
the observation of persons with neurological disabilities due to localized
lesions of the brain, such as tumors, was still in its beginning stages. The
main source of knowledge about the brain were the dissections performed on
the dead bodies of animals and humans. Localization of function in the brain
could only be glimpsed from the fact that there are many different-looking
anatomical structures in it, so that, perhaps, they could be responsible for
different faculties of the mind.

In this bleak scenario, enters the Austrian physician Franz Joseph Gall
(1758-1828), who pioneered the notion that different mental functions are
indeed located in different parts of the brain. This happened exactly 200
years ago, in 1796 ! As we will see, he was right on this notion, but
totally wrong on the way it was achieved by the brain. As a result, he
produced phrenology (from phrenos=mind, and logos=study) the first complete
theory of cerebral localizationism This was surely a major feat. However,
phrenology was later discarded and castigated by the scientific
establishment as a crude form of quackery and pseudoscience. But his
historical importance remains, so's the reason for the present article.

The Theory Behind Phrenology

Gall, in his noted work, "The Anatomy and Physiology of the Nervous System
in General, and of the Brain in Particular", put forward the principles on
which he based his doctrine of phrenology,.

Firstly, he believed that man's moral and intellectual faculties are innate
and that their manifestation depends on the organization of the brain, which
he considered to be the organ responsible for all the propensities,
sentiments and faculties.

            Secondly, Gall proposed that the brain is composed of many
            particular "organs", each one of them related or responsible for
            a given mental faculty. He proposed also that the relative
development of mental faculties in an individual would lead to a growth or
larger development in the sub-organs responsible for them.

Finally, Gall proposed that the external form of the cranium reflects the
internal form of the brain, and that the relative development of its organs
caused changes of form in the skull, which could be used to diagnose the
particular mental faculties of a given individual, by doing a proper
analysis.

In fact, Gall's theory was built the other way round. He carried out
numerous and careful observations and made many experimental measurements on
the skulls of his relatives, friends and pupils. Later on, with the help of
his associates, he did that on many persons with different personality
characteristics. Gall thought that he was able to correlate certain
particular mental faculties to bumps and depressions on the surface of the
skull, its exterior forms or relative dimensions. Then, he mooted on the
possibility that these external landmarks could be caused by the growth of
internal brain structures, and that this growth was related to the
development of the associated mental faculty. Thus, he was able to produce a
complete and extensive theory to support his work, and to use it for
practical applications in the mental sciences, by means of detailed
topological maps. The most important collaborator of Gall was Johann
Spurzheim (1776-1832), who later helped him to extend the so-called
phrenological model and to disseminate it in Europe and USA.

Phrenology's Destiny

The logical and easy-to-learn structure of the phrenological theory quickly
captured the imagination of thousands of followers. The preciseness and
scientific assurance of its terms and maps made headway in a time where the
main enemies of rationalism were religion, subjectivity and autocracy. Due
to this, Gall gained the support, if not the minds, of many important
scientific and political figures in many parts of the world. He was their
champion, in a terrain dominated by the teachings of religious philosophers.

Eventually, phrenology was attacked by the scientific establishment, which
could not corroborate Gall's theory with concrete findings. Already in 1808,
the Institute of France assembled a committee of savants. led by Cuvier, who
declared that phrenology was not to be trusted (some historians suspect that
they also had no scientific evidence to support this claim, and that the
conclusion was forced by Napoleon Bonaparte, who was furious because Gall's
interpretation of his skull "missed" some noble qualities he thought he
had...)

Phrenology was equated to other forms of quackery, mainly due to the abuses
in the hands of shady commercial entrepreneurs. Its demise happened in the
final quarter of the nineteen century. However, it spawned many other
scientific or pseudoscientific branches based on the quantitative analysis
of facial and cranial features, such as craniology, anthropometry and
psychognomy, many of which survived well into modern eras. Amazingly enough,
there are still followers and believers of phrenology around.

            To Know More

   * The phrenological map
   * Phrenology as quackery
   * Modern phrenology
   * Why Gall was right and wrong
   * Brain localization studies in the nineteenth century
   * Phrenology resources in the Internet

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 Renato M.E. Sabbatini is a neuroscientist and specialist in Biomedical
 Informatics, with a doctoral degree by the University of São Paulo and a
 postdoctoral fellowship in the Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry,
 Munich, Germany. He is the current director of the Center of Biomedical
 Informatics and professor of Medical Informatics of the Faculty of
 Medicine of the State University of Campinas, Brazil. Email:
 sabbatin@nib.unicamp.br

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                      Center for Biomedical Informatics
                    State University of Campinas, Brazil

                Copyright © 1997 State University of Campinas