Periodic attacks of uncertain origin, where the clinical presentationresembles epilepsy but there is no evidence of a somatic disease, arecalled Pseudo-Epilepsy or Pseudo-Epileptic Attack Disorder (PEAD). PEADmay be called a `non-disease', i.e. a disorder on the fringes ofestablished disease patterns, because it lacks a rationalpathophysiological explanation. The first aim of this article is tocriticize the idea, common in medical science, that diseases are realentities which exist separately from the patient, waiting to bediscovered by the doctor. We argue that doctor and (...) patient construct adisease, and that the construction of the disease PEAD includes manynormative evaluations. The second aim is to provide insight into thesuffering of patients with PEAD. We focus on three aspects of thepatient, identity, autonomy and responsibility. We present somecharacteristic descriptions of (pseudo-)epileptic attacks by FjodorDostoevsky, Gustave Flaubert and Thomas Mann. We argue that diagnosingPEAD reduces a meaningful life event into an insignificant, thoughintriguing, medical phenomenon, and that the patient will not benefitfrom being diagnosed as having PEAD. (shrink)

The idea that the brain is a representational organ has roots in the nineteenth century, when neurologists began drawing conclusions about what the brain represents from clinical and experimental studies. One of the earliest controversies surrounding representation in the brain was the “muscles versus movements” debate, which concerned whether the motor cortex represents complex movements or rather fractional components of movement. Prominent thinkers weighed in on each side: neurologists John Hughlings Jackson and F.M.R. Walshe in favor of complex movements, neurophysiologist (...) Charles Sherrington and neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield in favor of movement components. This essay examines these and other brain scientists’ evolving notions of representation during the first eighty years of the muscles versus movements debate (c. 1873–1954). Although participants agreed about many of the superficial features of representation, their inferences reveal deep-seated disagreements about its inferential role. Divergent epistemological commitments stoked conflicting conceptions of what representational attributions imply and what evidence supports them. (shrink)

Sutton's response to three reviews, by Catherine Wilson, Theo Meyering, and Michael Mascuch. Topics include historical cognitive science; the historical link between animal spirits and neural nets; conceptual change; control and time in memory; and Descartes the neurophilosopher.

Dual-Brain Psychology is a theory and its clinical applications that come out of the author's clinical observations and from the Split-brain Studies. The theory posits, based on decades of rigorous, peer-reviewed experiments and clinical reports, that, in most patients, one brain's cerebral hemisphere when stimulated by simple lateral visual field stimulation, or unilateral transcranial photobiomodulation, reveals a dramatic change in personality such that stimulating one hemisphere evokes, as a trait, a personality that is more childlike and more presently affected by (...) childhood maltreatments that are usually not presently appreciated but are the proximal cause of the patient's symptoms. The personality associated with the other hemisphere is much more mature, less affected by the traumas, and less symptomatic. The theory can be applied to in-depth psychotherapy in which the focus is on helping the troubled side to bear and process the traumas with the help of the therapist and the healthier personality. A person's symptoms can be evoked to aid the psychotherapy with hemispheric stimulation and the relationship between the dual personalities can be transformed from conflicted and sabotaging to cooperating toward overall health. Stimulating the positive hemisphere in most therapy patients rapidly relieves symptoms such as anxiety, depression, or substance cravings. Two randomized controlled trials used unilateral transcranial photobiomodulation to the positive hemisphere as a stand-alone treatment for opioid cravings and both revealed high effect sizes. The theory is supported by brain imaging and rTMS studies. It is the first psychological theory and application that comes out of and is supported by rigorous peer-reviewed experimentation. (shrink)

Multiple realization was once taken to be a challenge to reductionist visions, especially within cognitive science, and a foundation of the “antireductionist consensus.” More recently, multiple realization has come to be challenged on naturalistic grounds, as well as on more “metaphysical” grounds. Within cognitive science, one focal issue concerns the role of neural plasticity for addressing these issues. If reorganization maintains the same cognitive functions, that supports claims for multiple realization. I take up the reorganization involved in language dysfunctions to (...) deal with questions concerned with multiple realization and neural plasticity. Beginning with Broca’s case for localization and the nineteenth century discussion of “reorganization,” and returning to more recent evidence for neural plasticity, I argue that, in the end, there is substantial support for multiple realization in cognitive systems; I further argue that this is wholly consistent with a recognition of methodological pluralism in cognitive science. (shrink)

On the basis of knowledge prior to 1988, Ashbrook pointed out that whereas most men are primarily dependent on the left cerebral hemisphere (“dominant hemisphere”) for verbally related functions, women show a greater hemispheric balance in this respect. For men, he argues, their possession of a “speaking” and a “non‐speaking hemisphere” results in a positive‐negative, bipolar way of thinking that may be characterized as dualistic and dialectically hierarchical. In contrast, the greater balance of hemispheric function in women appears to promote (...) greater generalization and synthesis in their thinking.In this article I cite more recent neuroanatomical and brain imaging studies that provide further evidence of disparities in structure and function of the brains of men and women. As background for an attempt to explain these differences, I give a brief review of the triune evolution of the mammalian brain leading up to the human cerebrum. It is of major significance that the female has played a central role in mammalian evolution for more than 180 million years and that the evolutionary transition from reptilian therapsids to mammals is characterized by the develoment of (1) nursing conjoined with maternal care; (2) audiovocal communication or aiding mother‐offspring contact; and (3) play. In human beings, the infant‐carrying hypothesis suggests one means by which, over generations, certain parts of a woman's right hemisphere could undergo functional and eventual anatomical expansion. The mother‐infant communication of basic mammalian sounds with vowel and consonant components suggests a basis for the origination of speech.Finally, in an expansion of Ashbrook's original thesis, we arrive at the rovocative consideration that, unlike men, with their dialectical reasoning, women, with their more balanced brain, are provided with a trialectial ladder for climbing to achieve knowledge. In terms of quantum mechanics, the particle and wave would correspond to the substance and strength of the sides of the ladder, and the derived psychic information (which is neither matter nor energy) would compare to the rungs in between. (shrink)

In the interwar period, biologists employed a diverse set of holistic approaches that were connected to different research methodologies. Against this background, this article explores attempts in the 1920s and 1930s to negotiate quantitative and qualitative methods in the field of neurophysiology. It focuses on the work of two scientists on different sides of the Atlantic: the Dutch animal psychologist and physiologist Frederik J.J. Buytendijk and the American neuropsychologist Karl S. Lashley, specifically analyzing their critical correspondence, 1929–1932, on the problems (...) surrounding the term _intelligence._ It discusses the inexplicable anomalies in neurophysiology as well as the reliability of quantitative and qualitative methods. While in his laboratory work Lashley adhered to a strictly analytic approach, Buytendijk tried to combine quantitative methods with phenomenological and hermeneutical approaches. The starting point of their discussion is Lashley’s monograph on _Brain Mechanisms and Intelligence_ (1929) and the rat experiments discussed therein. Buytendijk questioned the viability of the maze-learning method and the use of statistics to test intelligence in animals; he reproduced Lashley’s experiments and then confronted Lashley with his critical findings. In addition to elucidating this exchange, this paper will, more generally, shed light on the nature of the disagreements and shared assumptions prevalent among interwar neurophysiologists. In turn, it contributes to historiographical debates on localization and functionalism and the discrepancy between analytic (quantitative) and interpretative (qualitative) approaches. (shrink)

In the late 19th century, physiologists such as David Ferrier, Eduard Hitzig, and Hermann Munk argued that cerebral brain functions are localized in discrete structures. By the early 20th century, this became the dominant position. However, another prominent physiologist, Friedrich Goltz, rejected theories of cerebral localization and argued against these physiologists until his death in 1902. I argue in this paper that previous historical accounts have failed to comprehend why Goltz rejected cerebral localization. I show that Goltz adhered to a (...) falsificationist methodology, and I reconstruct how he designed his experiments and weighted different kinds of evidence. I then draw on the exploratory experimentation literature from recent philosophy of science to trace one root of the debate to differences in how the German localizers designed their experiments and reasoned about evidence. While Goltz designed his experiments to test hypotheses about the functions of predetermined cerebral structures, the localizers explored new functions and structures in the process of constructing new theories. I argue that the localizers relied on untested background conjectures to justify their inferences about functional organization. These background conjectures collapsed a distinction between phenomena they produced direct evidence for (localized symptoms) and what they reached conclusions about (localized functions). (shrink)

The present work introduces the neuropsychological paradigm as a new approach to studying ancient literature. In the first part of the article, an epistemological framework for the proper use of neuropsychology in relation to ancient literature is presented. The article then discusses neuropsychological methods of studying different human experiences and dimensions already addressed by ancient literatures. The experiences of human encounters with gods among ancient cultures are first considered, through the contributions of Julian Jaynes and Eric R. Dodds. The concepts (...) of right and left in the Bible, and that of soul are then discussed. Ecstatic experience in Paul of Tarsus is also presented, with a particular focus on glossolalia. Neuroscientific differences between mindful and unitive meditative practices are then described referring to ancient Buddhist literature, and finally a brief description of dreams in ancient Greek literature is proposed. Neuropsychology variously enables a more profound understanding of themes characterizing human experiences that ancient literature has already explored; these investigations prove that the collaboration of neuroscience and humanistic studies can return fruitful and interesting results. (shrink)

The German pioneer of electrophysiology, Emil du Bois-Reymond (1818–1896), is generally assumed to have remained silent on the subject of the brain. However, the archive of his papers in Berlin contains manuscript notes to a lecture on “The Seat of the Soul” that he delivered to popular audiences in 1884 and 1885. These notes demonstrate that cerebral localization and brain function in general had been concerns of his for quite some time, and that he did not shy away from these (...) subjects. (shrink)