Getting to Know Your Brain - Psychology Article Series, Post #1

The German physician Franz Joseph Gall was known in the early 1800s for rubbing his fingers over strangers' scalps. The profession he practiced was not the one of a hairdresser, a masseuse, or a guy who loved heads like a hottie. No, it was far more than that. The profession he practiced was that of a phrenologist, and he was the first phrenologist to do so.

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As Gall believed, a person's personality could be correlated to the shape and contours of their skull, as well as the bumps and ridges on their skull that indicated aspects of their character. As it turned out, this "science" gained popularity and was widely practiced throughout the world for decades, and Gall became a celebrity due to it.

Because of the unusual shape of his head, it is not difficult to see how he might have been a bit fixated on the shape of the skull because of the unusual shape of his head. In the end, phrenology had to be regarded as a pseudoscience cult because, as it turns out, cranial contours don't tell us anything at all about what is going on inside the mind, which makes it exactly what it is, a cult.

Although this may be the case, I am forced to say that it is still true! Apparently, Gall was up to something really big that we weren't aware of, something that was going to have a huge effect on the world.

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Our understanding of the brain was just beginning to sink in at this point, and we were just beginning to conclude that who you are is just as much due to your brain as it is to your heart or soul. According to him, different parts of the brain control different aspects of our behavior, and it is this lasting and correct hypothesis that explains how we can control the different characteristics of our behavior.

As we discussed last time as well, there is a well-established relationship between biological activity and psychological events, and the two can be related in a number of ways. There is also the fact that specific parts of the brain have specific functions, including the ability to see, move, remember, speak, and even recognize faces, in addition to chemical interactions such as neurotransmitters and hormones. There is a lot to do with where these chemicals are located within the body which plays a huge role in this.

In other words, the function is confined to a specific location. If you were able to stimulate different parts of my brain in any way you wanted, you could control my movements, memories, and personality.

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You might be able to poke at one place and I would suddenly be filled with rage like the Hulk! Poking my brain at some other place would cause my arm to twitch; poking my brain at some other place would trigger my memory of my first kiss. Between the ears lies the brain, which connects to the mind, the part of us that thinks, behaves, makes decisions, and recalls memories.

According to some neuroscientists, the mind is what the brain does, which is why psychology and human experimentation are driven by the question, "How does the way in which our minds behave relate to how the brain functions?" It is impossible to get answers to the right questions without a thorough understanding of the brain.