Main description:

This book is a fascinating collection of various neuroscience terms coined over the last centuries. Each of the 45 chapters in this book dives deep into the etymologies, vernacular subtleties and historical anecdotes relating to these terms.

The book illustrates the rich and diverse history of neuroscience, which has borrowed and continues to borrow terms and concepts from across cultures, literature and languages. The ever-increasing number of terms that needed to be coined with the mushrooming of the field required neuroscientists to show astonishing imagination and creativity, leading them to draw inspiration from Graeco-Roman mythology (Elpenor's syndrome), literature (Lasthenie de Ferjol's syndrome), theatre (Ondine's curse), Japanese folklore (Kanashibari), and even the Bible (Matthew effect). This book will of be immense interest to scholars and researchers studying neuroscience, history of science, anatomy, psychology and linguistics. It will also appeal to any reader interested in learning more about neuroscience and its history.

All the chapters included in this book were originally published in a column that appeared from 1997 to 2020 in the Journal of the History of the Neurosciences.

Contents:

Rhinencephalon: A Brain for the Nose?

Fornix and Gyrus fornicates: Carnal Sins?

Cerebral Mythology: A Skull Stuffed With Gods

The Three Musketeers and the Twelve Cranial Nerves

Just What is the Inferior Cerebellar Peduncle?

Vague, Uncertain, Ambiguous, Obscure: Imprecision or Modesty?

Vater, Pacini, Wagner, Meissner, Golgi, Mazzoni, Ruffini, Merkel and Krause: Were their nerves all on edge?

The Subfornical and Subcommissural Organs: Never-Ending Rediscoveries

Arachnophobia: Spiders and Spider's Webs in the Head

Claustrum: A Sea Wall Between the Island and the Shell?

Phantom Limb: Haunted Body?

Lasthenie de Ferjol's Syndrome: A Tribute Paid by Jean Bernard to Jules Amedee Barbey d'Aurevilly

Ansa Hypoglossi or Ansa Cervicalis: That is the Question...

Reissner's Fibre: The Exception Which Proves the Rule, or the Devil According to Charles Baudelaire?

If there are "Deep" Cerebellar Nuclei, Where are the "Superficial" Ones?

"James Parkinson did not die of his own personal disease... he died of a stroke" Eponyms: Possessive or Nonpossessive?

Give a Kiss to a Frog and it Will Turn into... A Neuropeptide: The Genealogy of the Bombesin-Like Family

Nomenclature of Persistent Carotid Vertebrobasilar Anastomoses

Interthalamic Adhesion: Scruples About Calling a Spade a Spade?

Herophilus' Press, Torcular and Confluens Sinuum: A Triple Mistake

From Dante Alighieri's First Circle to Paul Donald MacLean's Limbic System

Elpenor's Syndrome: The Link Between One of Ulysses' Companions and the Tenth President of the Third French Republic

Munchausen Syndrome By Proxy: Karl Friedrich Hieronymus, Baron von Munchhausen, Hasn't Got Anything To Do With It

Oedipus Complex: A Confession to a Berlin Otorhinolaryngologist that Became a Cornerstone of Psychoanalysis

The Brain in its Birthday Suit: No More Reason to be Ashamed

The Pen Nib and the Bolt: The Rhomboid Fossa of the Fourth Ventricle or the Symbol of the Censorship of the Press?

A Concert Hall for Stringed Musical Instruments Under the Splenium of the Corpus Callosum

The Cerebellum the Earthworm and the Freshwater Crayfish: An Unpublished Fable of Jean de La Fontaine?

Korbinian Brodmann: The Victor Hugo of Cytoarchitectonic Brain Maps

Brain Heraldic Tinctures and Evolution Theory: A Sensational Turn of Events That Should Have Been Kept Secret

Renfield's Syndrome: A Psychiatric Illness drawn From Bram Stoker's Dracula

"Matthew Effect" in Neurosciences

Is Poetry a Disease of the Brain, as Alfred de Vigny Said?

Between Andre Du Laurens' Horst Tail and William Cadogan's Pony Tail

Kanashibari ( ): A Ghost's Business

"Magic Mirror in my Hand, Who is the Fairest in the Land... and, Incidentally, Are You Transparent or Shining?"

Trigeminal Neuralgia: Pleonasm and Miscalculation

Hallervorden-Spatz Disease: Did One Set the Fox to Mind the Geese?

The sleeping brain: Extenuating circumstances of the Marquis de La Fayette on October 6, 1789

The devil always experienced malicious pleasure in imposing himself in neuropsychiatric nosology

Tabes dorsalis: Not, at all, "Elementary my dear Watson!"

Ondine's curse: With Jean Giraudoux's finishing touches

Moyamoya ( ): When cerebral arteries go up in smoke

Migraine: Between headache, pomegranate, seed of cochineal, and unidentified fish

45. Phrenology: Scheherazade of etymology