Editorial
Neuroscientists assume that the deceptively amorphous macroscopic appearance of the brain conceals untold complexities of regional specification; that distributed function is reflected by variations in structure; and vice versa. Superficially, as it were, these beliefs are expressed as the phrenological maps that Franz Josef Gall and Johann Caspar Spurzheim started to produce from the 1790s. But as the bumpy road to phrenology was revised in the late 19th century by accumulating evidence for brain ‘centres’ provided by experimental and disease-related focal lesions, three books placed the emerging doctrine of cerebral localization under the microscope and classified the cerebral cortex into over 100 discrete areas based on differences in cytoarchitectonics: Alfred W Campbell's Histological studies on the localisation of cerebral function (1905); Karl Brodmann's Vergleichende Lokalisationslehre der Grosshirnrinde (1909), translated as Brodmann's ‘Localisation in the cerebral cortex’ (1994) and Constantin von Economo and George N Koskinas's Die Cytoarchitektonik der Hirnrinde des erwachsenen Menschen. Atlas mit 112 mikrophotografischen Tafeln in besonderer Mappe, with an accompanying text volume (1925), epitomized by von Economo in a translation by Dr S Parker as The cytoarchitectonics of the human cerebral cortex in the Oxford Medical Publications series (1929). Now, Karger (Basel) have reproduced the monumental Atlas volume of Die Cytoarchitektonik der Hirnrinde with textual translations by Lazaros C. Triarhou. As Edward Jones wryly comments, in ‘Cortical maps and modern phrenology’, ‘the 112 original photographs [were] contact prints from large 40 cm x 40 cm glass negatives at a magnification of 100 times from histological sections of the human cortex stained by the Nissl method ... housed in a boxlike case with a slip that warned one not crack them by lifting with one hand and to keep sticky fingers off the surface of the plate ...’ and Prof. Jones advises that Die Cytoarchitektonik der Hirnrinde, with the images reproduced in their original dimensions, is ‘... just the thing for a medical coffee table. Indeed just add legs and it would become a coffee table in its own right!’A man of independent means who financed publication of the Atlas (probably delegating the lion's share of the work to Koskinas—the plates being stamped on the verso ‘proofed by Dr Koskinas and seen by Professor [sic] von Economo’), was inspired to study the brain after reading Cesare Lombroso's L’Uomo Delinquente (The criminal, 1876) and L’Uoma di genio in rapporto alla psichiatria (The man of genius, 1889), resisted invitations to take up professorships or directorships of various clinics in Vienna, spoke at least five languages fluently, travelled widely and was a pioneer aeronaut and balloonist, Constantin Alexander Baron Economo von San Serff (1876–1931) was no idle neurological dilettante. His fame lies in the recognition and description of encephalitis lethargica (Wiener klinishe Wochenschrift 1917: 30; 581–585 and 26 subsequent papers; and the monograph, Die Encephalitis lethargica; ihre Nachkrankheiten und ihre Behandlung, 1929, translated by Dr KO Newman as Encephalitis lethargica: its sequelae and treatment, 1931, in the Oxford Medical Publications series) which swept across the world for a decade from 1917 leaving wrecked neurological lives in its wake. Madame Oberhummer-Economo worked with Julius Wagner–Jauregg in writing the first biography of her late husband (Baron Constantin von Economo, his Life and Work, 1937) and a later account with his friend Ludo van Bogaert and nephew Jean Théodoridès (Constantin von Economo: The Man and The Scientist, 1979, reviewed by Ian McDonald, Brain 1980; 103: 1002–1003).
Trained in New Zealand and Oxford (UK), Edward Jones has been on the faculty at Washington University School of Medicine (St Louis) and the University of California (Irvine and, subsequently, Davis) since moving to the USA, his work ranging from detailed studies of brain structure to cell and molecular analyses in schizophrenia. Prof. Jones brings to his review the benefit and authority of almost 50 years studying the microscopic anatomy of the feline and human brain; and he is well qualified to admire the clarity and accuracy of Economo and Koskinas's images as a neuroscientist himself expert in the instrumental techniques on which their reproductions of cytoarchitectonics in the human brain depend. Dr Jones explains how a competitive spirit amongst exponents of cytoarchitectonics—whereby the tally of cortical areas increased from 14 (Campbell) to 44 (Brodmann), and 107 (Economo and Kostinas) to 200 (Cécile and Oscar Vogt)—led to a decline in the perceived value of these catalogues. But he is not in doubt that an interest in cytoarchitectonics is back in force as ‘modern phrenologists, equipped with the powerful tools of functional MRI, seek to relate tiny pseudo-coloured patches of slightly enhanced cortical activity associated with some limited cognitive function to an underlying structural correlate’; and he explains that cortical function will never be understood by matching fMRI to function unless the correlation of individual neuronal functions, cytoarchitectonics and connectivity—possible in living awake animals, difficult in the human brain—as pioneered by Vernon Mountcastle and Thomas Powell and by David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel in the late 1950s and 1960s, and in the related contemporary studies of fibre tracing and tractography of Jeremy Schmahmann and colleagues (Brain 2007: 130; 630–653), are deployed.
Two papers in this issue deal with the morphological and functional consequences of altered cortical development. On page 2028, Jessica Dubois and colleagues from Geneva (Switzerland), Utrecht (Netherlands), Orsay, Saclay and Paris (France) and Boston (USA) use endophenotypes defined by patterns of cortical folding at ages equivalent to 26–36 weeks gestation in infants born premature but disadvantaged by various in utero events to show differences in sulcal patterns and gyrification that predict cerebral volume and behavioural development early in life.
Amongst four papers on vascular neurology, Eric Jouvent and groups from Paris (France), Boston (USA) and Munich (Germany) study the effect on cortical sulci of vascular lesions seen in cerebral autosomal dominant arteriopathy with subcortical infarcts and leukoencephalopathy (CADASIL: page 2201): they show that the nature and extent of subcortical tissue damage correlates with physical and cognitive disability scores and alterations in the morphology of cortical sulci that reflect the extent of small vessel disease of the underlying brain.
Tore Eid and investigators from New Haven and Pocatello (USA) and Oslo (Norway) show that epilepsy is associated with depletion of glutamine synthetase in the rodent hippocampus leading to increased extracellular glutamate and, in some animals, neuropathological features typical of mesial temporal sclerosis (page 2061). The four contributions on Parkinson's disease include work by Rosario Sanchez-Pernaute and colleagues from Belmont and New York (USA) who generate embryonic stem cell progeny expressing markers for midbrain dopaminergic neurones and show that transplantion of these parthogenetic post-mitotic (and hence safe from the perspective of tumour growth) neurones restores motor function in two models of Parkinson's disease, especially if the cells are given a final boost in vitro of growth and signalling factors (page 2127). Three papers deal with adaptation and plasticity in the nervous system. Floris de Lange and investigators from Nijmegen (Netherlands) treat the nosologically ambiguous disorder chronic fatigue syndrome using cognitive behavioural therapy, combining graded physical activity with psychological adjustment of beliefs and thoughts about the disorder, to show (by comparison with controls) an increase in lateral prefrontal cortical grey matter volume that matches improvements in physical activities and speed of cognitive performance; but quite what structures have taken up the space in these plastic brain regions is not so clear (page 2172).
On regional specification of function, Isabel Arend, Robert Rafal and Robert Ward from Bangor (UK) ‘dissect’ the thalamus to show a gradient of defects in spatial and temporal attention across the anterior to posterior parts of the pulvinar, respectively, reflecting connections of this thalamic nucleus wired to the cortical areas of Campbell, Brodmann and Economo that are specialized for particular components of visual function, especially attention (page 2140). Alan Cowey and colleagues from Oxford and Durham (UK) study two informative patients to show that, despite total acquired cortical achromatopsia, these individuals have intact pupillary responses to colour, even in response to tricks of luminance, if the chromatic stimuli retain sharp boundaries that preserve the ability to detect shape but not hue; nor do these patients ‘see’ the colours to which their pupils faithfully respond (page 2153). The paradox they resolve is the ability of cortically blind subjects to detect coloured stimuli against isoluminant backgrounds, now showing that ‘vision’ evidently is abolished when sharp chromatic borders around or within coloured stimuli are removed.
Colour vision has long fascinated neuroscientists from the days when clinical neurologists and experimentalists denied that a region of the occipital cortex is specialized for colour to the magisterial summary and clarification by Semir Zeki (A century of cerebral achromotopsia, Brain 1990: 113; 1721–1777). Important amongst other lines of evidence on which Professor Zeki bases his evaluation are the lessons of clinical neurology. In From the Archives, we review ‘Disturbed perception of colours associated with localized cerebral lesions’ by John Meadows (Brain 1974: 97; 615–632).
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