Higher brain function and the laws of thermodynamics: Hans Berger and his time.

This editorial provides an overview of Hans Berger's discovery of human electroencephalography (EEG). Berger succeeded in recording mass brain signals first from animals (1902), then from patients with skull defects after neurosurgery, and finally from healthy volunteers (1924). Research in the first decades of the 20th century often appears both ambitious and na ïve to our modern scientific eyes, somehow bizarre. The idea of some psychic energy independent of brain mechanisms and function, perhaps immaterial, looked probably more acceptable in Berger’s time than we may estimate today. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved)

Source: Journal of Psychophysiology - February 22, 2017 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Sannita, Walter G. Source Type: research