FMRIB, Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging, Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Oxford, John Radcliffe Hospital, Headington, Oxford, UK.
FMRIB, Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging, Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Oxford, John Radcliffe Hospital, Headington, Oxford, UK.
Cortex. 2018 Sep;106:26-35. doi: 10.1016/j.cortex.2018.04.011. Epub 2018 May 9.
Phrenology was a nineteenth century endeavour to link personality traits with scalp morphology, which has been both influential and fiercely criticised, not least because of the assumption that scalp morphology can be informative of underlying brain function. Here we test the idea empirically rather than dismissing it out of hand. Whereas nineteenth century phrenologists had access to coarse measurement tools (digital technology referring then to fingers), we were able to re-examine phrenology using 21st century methods and thousands of subjects drawn from the largest neuroimaging study to date. High-quality structural MRI was used to quantify local scalp curvature. The resulting curvature statistics were compared against lifestyle measures acquired from the same cohort of subjects, being careful to match a subset of lifestyle measures to phrenological ideas of brain organisation, in an effort to evoke the character of Victorian times. The results represent the most rigorous evaluation of phrenological claims to date.
颅相学是 19 世纪的一种努力，旨在将人格特征与头皮形态联系起来，它具有影响力，也受到了强烈的批评，尤其是因为它假设头皮形态可以提供有关大脑功能的信息。在这里，我们通过实证检验这个想法，而不是一概而论地否定它。虽然 19 世纪的颅相学家可以使用粗糙的测量工具（当时的数字技术是指手指），但我们能够使用 21 世纪的方法和来自迄今为止最大的神经影像学研究的数千名受试者重新检验颅相学。使用高质量的结构磁共振成像来量化局部头皮曲率。将得到的曲率统计数据与同一批受试者的生活方式测量值进行比较，同时小心地将生活方式测量值的一个子集与颅相学的大脑组织观念相匹配，以努力唤起维多利亚时代的特征。结果代表了迄今为止对颅相学主张最严格的评估。
