Gray Matter

The history of the brain and the human mind.

In this book, Ignacio Morgado reviews chronologically, from remote antiquity to the present day, the main ideas, characters and discoveries that made possible the current knowledge of the brain and the human mind. It is conceived as a story that begins at a time when the brain’s purpose was not even known and progresses to scientific psychology and behavioral neuroscience. It describes the ideas, experiments and discoveries of philosophers and scientists such as Aristotle, Galen, Descartes, Galvani, Von Helmholtz, Ramon y Cajal, Sherrington, Pavlov and Skinner. It also discusses the main technical inventions that made this knowledge possible, such as the compound microscope, devices for storing electricity, the electroencephalogram and modern neuroimaging.