Nervous systems and the study of behaviour

People in antiquity seem to have had no idea that the brain was in any way connected with behaviour. Even that great practical biologist Aristotle was mistaken in his ideas. He observed the rich vascular supply of the brain and concluded that it was an organ for cooling the blood. The ancient Egyptians were positively cavalier in their attitude: when the body of a monarch was being prepared for mummification, the brain was extracted with a spoon and thrown away. The brain was considered unnecessary for the future life, but the entrails were carefully preserved in a jar and kept beside the mummified body.

Modern opinion emphasises the paramount importance of the brain as the source of an individual's behaviour and personality. This trend has gone so far that many a successful work of science fiction has been based on the idea that the brain might be kept alive or transplanted, and that by this means the essential personality of the original individual might be preserved after the rest of the body has been disposed of. This vast change in prevailing opinion about the brain is, of course, due to the anatomical and physiological research of the last 200 years, which has revealed the nature and importance of the central nervous system.

Our present understanding of the way in which nervous systems control animal behaviour owes much to a group of biologists working in the middle of the twentieth century, who pioneered an experimental approach to analysing behaviour.