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The mind altering properties of the poppy plant were first record in ancient Sumer
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The ancient Egyptians believed the heart was the most important organ in the body and wrote the first anatomy of the brain known as the Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus
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Trepanation is a form of primitive brain surgery that involves boring a hole through the skull. It may have been a method of treating headaches, epilepsy and mental illness
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An early Greek physician, Alcmaeon, dissected animals and concluded that the brain not the heart is the central organ of sensation an thought
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Aristotle's theories about memory correctly surmise that the process involved in short term memory (immediate recall) differ from those involved in long term memory
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Herophilus and Erasistratus, two major Alexandrian biologists are the first to dissect a human body and compare it with animals. They conclude that the seat of intelligence lies in the ventricles of the brain
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Galen, a physician to the Roman gladiators proposes that the brain is a glandular organ that contains four vital fluids: blood, phlegm =, choler and black bile that influence human temperament
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Brain studies ceased during the Middle Ages due to a church ban on human dissection and the study of anatomy
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Andreas Versalius publishes De humani corporus fabrica, one of the first known neuroscience textbooks
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Rene Descartes, a French philosopher and mathematics, propose the idea that the brain functions like a machine
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Luigi Galvani conducted experiments in which he caused frog muscles to twitch by touching them with wires. His work is an important step toward our understanding of the electrical basis of neutral activity
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Franz Joseph Gall founds the study of phrenology, which holds that a person's personality can be determined by the bumps on his head
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A railroad worker survived a bizarre accident in which his frontal lobe was pierced by an iron rod during an explosion. His mood and behaviour changed from quiet and industrious to surly and combative
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Charles Darwin in his book "The Expression of the Emotions of Man and Animals", proposes that only humans blush
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An electroencephalograph is an instrument used for measuring and recording electrical activity of the brain
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A prefrontal leucotomy is a surgical procedure that involves severing the connections between the prefrontal cortex and the rest of the brain
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A machine that provides visual information about the activity of the brain is known as a Positron Emission Topography or PET scanner
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President George Bush declares the decade starting in 1990 as the Decade of the Brain
