Abstract
What was the brain for ancient people; did someone think it to be the seat of mind? Yukihiko Kayama and Robert W. Doty Department of Neurophysiology, Fukushima Medical University, Fukushima, Japan Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy, University of Rochester, Rochester, N.Y., U.S.A. The brain is the organ processing various information, producing mental activity or spinning mind. Old Egyptian people did not think the brain to be an important organ; when mummies were prepared, the heart was left in the body and other organs were preserved in a stone box, but the brain was discarded. In the old Greek age, Alkmaion of Kroton (ca 500 BC) proposed that the brain was essential for perception (Doty, Neuroscience 147:561-568, 2007); the idea of the mental premacy of the brain influenced the teachings of Hippokratic school, but virtually slept for two millennia in Europe. In Asia, how did ancient Chinese or Japanese people understand the brain? We inspected meaning of the Kanji of the brain appearing in old literature. In I-shin-poh, the oldest medical book in Japan compiling more than 200 Chinese books, two Kanjis of the brain appeared; both were used to indicate something within the skull (with no meaning of mind). Also in the biggest Chinese-Japanese dictionary (edited by Tetsuji Morohashi) main meaning of the brain is substance, or marrow, within the skull, though in the dictionary a sentence is cited in which a Chinese writer (ca 300 AD) used the brain as a meaning of heart or spirit. [J Physiol Sci. 2008;58 Suppl:S150]
