The Advance of Neuroscience

Neuroscience, like psychology, has a short history but a long past. Although the mind-body relationship has been studied for a long time, it is only in the last fifty years that the term “neuroscience” has been applied to the academic disciplines focusing on brain and behavior. This book explores topics on the brain, psychoactive drugs, and a variety of human behaviors and experiences—such as music and sleep—taking into consideration the importance of historical roots of neuroscience, which have been largely unexamined before now. It looks particularly at the importance of the Victorian era in the development of theories of the nervous system, which are still visible in today’s discourse on brain and behavior.

Lori A. Schmied is a professor of psychology and coordinator of the neuroscience program at Maryville College in Maryville, Tennessee.

Lori A. Schmied

Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 256
Bibliographic Info: notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2019
pISBN: 978-1-4766-6557-3
eISBN: 978-1-4766-3397-8
Imprint: McFarland

Acknowledgments ix
Preface 1
Introduction 5

The Brain
1. The New Phrenology 15
2. The Double Brain 32
3. “To Sleep, Perchance to Dream” 53
4. Bad Vibrations: Music on the Brain 69

Drugs and Behavior
5. Victorian Explorations of Psychoactive Drugs 83
6. LSD Redux: Hallucinogens 96
7. The Poppy’s Curse: Opiates 112

Applied Neuroscience
8. You Are What You Eat: Gut and Brain 127
9. “The Heinous Sin”: Viagra 140
10. What’s Your Type? Typologies 153
11. Detoxing the Brain 169
12. The “Rest Cure” Revisited 183

Conclusion 197
Chapter Notes 205
Bibliography 217
Index 237

• “A superb job of describing the historical path of thinking and how theory has led to practice…recommended”—Choice