HISTNEUR-L: The History of Neuroscience Internet Forum

[Previous Posting] [Next Posting]

Re: Ventricular Doctrine 

Continuing my reply to Christopher Green's message of Sun, 22 Feb 1998 12:01:23 -0500 
:
You write:

As well, I'd be interested to know which Platonists, exactly, endorsed a
cerebral ventricular theory. Certainly not Plato himself. If it is
middle and neo-platonists you have in mind, they almost certainly adopted
this from non-Platonic influences (medicine? middle stoics?). 

I meant only that Plato believed the mental processes to be organically
situated in the brain.

I'm also interested in exactly where in the Hippocratic writings a
cerebral ventricular is posited. Although the Hippocratic corpus is rife
with contradictions, in the more famous works the Hippocratics advocate
the humoral theory (although "the sacred disease" was famously attributed
to the brain).

Ditto. I meant only that the Hippocratic school sited the mental processes
in the brain.

Although the Hippocratic corpus is rife
with contradictions, in the more famous works the Hippocratics advocate
the humoral theory (although "the sacred disease" was famously attributed
to the brain).

I don't want to misunderstand you here. You're not implying that humoral
theory is contrary to the mind being seated in the brain, are you?

I don't have a copy of this here at home, but my recollection is that
although Galen described the anatomy of the ventricles, he believed the
actual processes of cognition to take place in the *matter* of the brain,
not in the ventricles.

Yes, that is also my understanding. I still consider him the model for
Nemesius, for several reasons: (1) Nemesius was clearly very familiar with
the writings of Galen; (2) In my perspective, the idea of mental faculties
seated in a particular order in the brain, in other words, localization of
mental faculties in the brain in front-to-back order, is more important
than whether this is thought to be in the substance or in the ventricles.
The directionality, the dynamics, and the psychic pneuma, are common to
both; (3) I am not totally convinced that Nemesius' theory IS actually a
ventricular theory.

I haven't got the text in front of me, and I really should look at it before
making any statements, so please just take this as a question. In his most
recent posting, Christopher Robinson quoted a passage from Nemesius:

     In the fourth century work On the Nature of Man, by Nemesius, the
bishop of Emesa, discusses  the ventricular doctrine (Telfer, 1955). He
begins by enumerating the faculties of the soul as imagination, intellect
and memory. Then he proceeds, based essentially on lesion evidence, to
localize these faculties in the cerebral ventricles. In this treatise, he
says that "as organs, the faculty of imagination has, first the front
lobes of the brain and the psychic spirit contained in them" (ibid., p.
321). Later, he says that the faculty of the intellect is in the middle
part of the brain "and the vital spirit there contained" (ibid., p. 338).
Finally, the organ of memory was in the "hinder part of the brain and the
vital spirit there contained" (ibid., p. 341).

Does Nemesius specifically say "ventricles"? Because in the lines quoted,
all I see is localization. The fact that he refers to "the vital spirit
there contained" does not in itself imply ventricles, because _pneuma_
could move through the subtance of the brain itself. 

In other words, I think of Galen's "substance" theory of localization, and
the ventricular theory, as two variations on a theme. They differ
anatomically, but conceptually I don't know that they are really so
different. Correct me if I'm wrong.

The psychological entricular theory was a later
innovation that seems to date from just before the time of Augustine and
Nemesius, as I recall.

(So writes Chr. Green). Well, in his latest posting, Chr. Robinson said
that Herophilus "postulated a simple ventricular theory". Now Herophilus
lived around 300 BC. I'm not taking sides here, I just want to point out
that there seems to be a lot of obscurity around this question. Could it
be that we are sometimes confusing ventricular theory with mere cerebral
localization? 

Jeffrey Wollock
<HISTNEUR-L@library.ucla.edu>