Читать книгу A History of Neuropsychology - Группа авторов - Страница 13

At the time, lateralization, or cerebral specialization, was not under debate. Xavier Bichat [8], seeing that all paired structures in the brain “resemble each other on every side,” declared what came to be known as the law of symmetry: “two parts essentially alike in their structure cannot be different in their mode of acting” (pp 8, 14). Gall, likewise, envisioned the organs in each pair as anatomically and functionally identical, and overlooked the soldier’s injury being on the left.

Not everyone saw the hemispheres that way. Vicq d’Azyr [9] and Malgaigne [10] were among those who remarked on their asymmetrical appearance. For Malgaigne, it meant that “if the phrenological organs are situated in these convolutions, the necessary conclusion will be that these organs are not the same in the 2 hemispheres” (p 371). But these were minority views, and the law of symmetry remained a core physiological principle.