Life / Neuroscience & Psychology

Brain as seat of thought

Greek physicians concluded that thought, feeling and sensation come from the brain, not the heart.

Alcmaeon of Croton (around 500 BC) argued that the brain links the senses and thinking, and the Hippocratic text On the Sacred Disease (around 400 BC) called epilepsy a brain disorder rather than divine punishment. Aristotle still placed the mind in the heart, but Herophilos and Erasistratus in Alexandria (around 300 BC) traced nerves, and Galen later showed that cutting nerves causes paralysis. This framed the question that neuroscience still works on.