Doty Robert W
Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy, University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, 601 Crittenden, Rochester, NY 14642, USA.
Neuroscience. 2007 Jul 13;147(3):561-8. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroscience.2007.02.046. Epub 2007 Apr 11.
Without special examination the brain offers no clue that it is the organ of the mind. From the dawn of time man thus either ignored the problem as to the source of thought, or attributed it to a variety of anatomical structures, usually the heart. The brain held no place in such intuitions, and in most languages it is analogized to bone marrow. Furthermore, nothing in early medical systems claimed any intellectual capacity for the brain; and the Egyptians, so fastidious in care for their afterlife, heedlessly discarded the brain in funerary practice. It was thus a unique event in world history when Alkmaion of Kroton (Alcmaeon, ca. 500 bc), based on anatomical evidence, proposed that the brain was essential for perception. Although no writings of Alkmaion survived, it was probably via a fortuitous linkage that his idea of the mental primacy of the brain was transmitted to, and preserved within, the teachings of the Hippocratic school. Nothing, of course, was secure as to mechanism, two millennia unfolding until the search for mind passed from the ventricles to the cerebral cortex. Nonetheless, Alkmaion was the beginning, and the ensuing understanding that he initiated is still transforming humanity's perception of the natural world, and their place within it.
在没有进行特殊检查的情况下，大脑并不会显示出它是思维器官的迹象。从远古时代起，人类要么忽略了思想来源的问题，要么将其归因于各种解剖结构，通常是心脏。大脑在这些直觉中没有一席之地，并且在大多数语言中，它被类比为骨髓。此外，早期医学体系中没有任何理论认为大脑具有智力功能；而埃及人在对待来世时如此挑剔，却在丧葬习俗中随意丢弃大脑。因此，当克罗顿的阿尔克迈翁（约公元前500年）基于解剖学证据提出大脑对感知至关重要时，这在世界历史上是一个独特的事件。尽管阿尔克迈翁的著作没有留存下来，但他关于大脑在精神方面具有首要地位的观点可能是通过一种偶然的联系，被传递到了希波克拉底学派的教义中并得以保存。当然，在机制方面没有任何定论，两千年过去了，对思维的探索才从脑室转移到大脑皮层。尽管如此，阿尔克迈翁是这一切的开端，他所引发的后续认知仍在不断改变人类对自然世界的认知以及人类在其中的位置。
