Minds and Brains Final
Fulton thought it was difficult locate the higher faculties in apes. How can you study them as a surgeon? Luckily for Fulton, the foremost expert on animal behavior is at Yale. He begins to work with Robert Yerkes on apes.
"Turning to questions involving perception, learning, memory, and other higher intellectual faculties, objective data are far more difficult to obtain." Fulton, "Medicine and the Infra-Human Primate" (1933)
Behaviorism is also related to C. Lloyd Morgan and his dog Tony. Tony trying to carry a stick through a gate and fence can be translated into stimulus and response. Prior stimulus - desire to carry a stick. Stimulus of the successful carrying of the stick. Behaviorists call this kind of learning stimulus and response
C. Lloyd Morgan, Animal Behaviour (1900), 145.
A sham trial used to pass Harry Laughlin's sterilization law. Carrie and Emma Buck have been living at the Virginia Colony for Feeble-Minded and Epileptic. Here is the buck pedigree chart. In the first generation, an f refers to feeble-minded. Carrie Buck is the product of an illegitimate relationship. Her mother is deemed sexually promiscuous. Carrie is deemed feeble minded when she bears a child out of wed-lock, when she was raped. Carrie Buck's daughter was classified as feeble-minded at the time of birth. Justification for sterilization of Carrie. Sterilization is better for her and society. The lawsuit is brought to the supreme court, where the compulsory sterilization law is upheld.
Carrie Buck, Buck V. Bell
Relating behaviorism to Thorndike: Stimulus is that the cat is put in the box hungry and the fish is just out of reach. The local stimulus is operating the mechanism to get out of the box. Behaviorists translate into stimulus and response.
Edward L. Thorndike, "Animal Intelligence: An Experimental Study of the Associative Processes in Animals," The Psychological Review 2:4 (June 1898)
Charles Davenport was the leading figure in the American eugenic movement. He was a scientists at Harvard. In 1904, he became director of Harvard lab in New York. In 1910, founded the Eugenics Record office. Davenport and Laughlin produce family pedigree charts, graphs, and reports to secure scientific legitimacy and funding for Eugenics. Received funding from Kellogg's and Carnegie. Members included Thorndike and Graham Bell. Laughlin plans for eugenics were (1) immigrants from southern and eastern Europe were prone to insanity. He was responsible for immigration act of 1924, which halted immigration of the US. (2) He sought to stop reproduction of mentally unfit. These operations were safer and easier to perform in the early 20th century. At the same time, institutions were crowded and isolation of individuals for their whole reproductive life was expensive. This would make it cheaper for intuition but also made the institution appeared moral. Soon, people would not need to agree to be sterilized. State past compulsory sterilization laws. Laughlin drafted a model sterilization law impermeable to objection.
Charles Davenport and Harry Laughlin
Almost every patient Cushing had, he took a photo of. This contributed to his boundary work. These are all different peoples - lifelong terrible disabilities, wealthy people, people form asylums, rich/poor. He becomes a destination doctor because he was one of the only people able to do this type of procedure. This archive was also part boundary work - he was trying to make a new scientific field
Cushing, Tumor Registry Patient Records (Various Dates)
Darwin's theory of emotion can be imagined it in the terms of stimulus and response - relates it to Behaviorism. There is some stimulus to this animal and this is the response that you get.
Darwin, Expression of the Emotions (1872), 53.
Advances in prenatal screening combined with the screening of abortion incites debates about he value of human life against the affects on society. Prenatal screening can determine if a fetus has down syndrome as early as nine weeks into the pregnancy. Over 90% of pregnancies with fetuses of down syndrome are terminated. - Sarah Palin says we shouldn't abort children with down syndrome, pointing towards her own child.
Eugenics Today in the Lens of Prenatal Screening
Eugenics doubled as both a science and a reform movement, it social influence outlasted its precarious scientific standing. It drew on many branches of other movements to gain its power.
Eugenics Tree
Hitler initially pursued positive eugenics for mothers who had big healthy Aryan families (blonde hair, blue eyes). Aryans represented a pure and superior race. Germans kept many genealogical records. Hitler then pursued negative eugenics about people who created an economic burden in society. In drafting his law for hereditarily offspring, he was inspired by Laughlin's law. Nazis experimented on and murdered mentally ill people. Code-named action t4. Between 70,000 and 100,000 mentally ill individuals were murdered. German propaganda recalls eugenics. Due to Nazi racial hygiene and the holocaust, American eugenists sought to distance themselves. Eventually, anything with the name eugenics was removed.
Eugenics in Germany
Methods to decerebrate cats to study its reflexes. The cat is alive during all of them and then becomes a "preparation." The time take twenty minutes. All the dominate nerves must be cut. Lowest use of anaesethisa. Emergence of neurological things. He makes his name studying the automatic things, but what he is really interested in is higher faculties. He knows you cannot assume that dogs and cats have higher faculties (thanks to Morgans). Humans and apes
Fulton, "The Influence of the Proprioceptive Nerves...in Decerebrate Cats," Am. J. of Physiology (1928)
Lobotomy. This painting shows the long history of cutting into the human brain. There is evidence of this of up to 10,000 years ago. The skull was born into in order to relieve pain, mental illness, and various strange behaviors. Already, in the very early renaissance, there is an idea that something can be removed from the skull, if it is causing mental illness. Bosch is also lampooning this practice - facial expression of patient, hat of surgeon, book on woman's head. But it is a common practice. The idea that manipulating the brain allows us to change the mind. Many people don't surive though many do. It is a deadly procedure.
Hieronymous Bosch, Cutting Stone, 1494
1. Anaesthesia and the Chemical Mind: As anesthetic ether becomes more widespread, there is more time to poke around inside the head. It also changes the idea of how the mind are connected. The mind and brain can be turned on and off chemically in controlled way. 2. Antisepsis and Surgical Method: New practices in surgical techniques reduced fatalities and enabled more invasive procedures than ever. come together in the 19th century
How did the changing neurological landscape allow for lobotomy?
(1) Psychology as Observation: Demands to make psychology a science led many to focus on observable phenomena around the 1900. If someone had to postulate an interior mental state to explain something, it was necessarily true that that was going on. Behavior can be measured and quantified and observed. (2) Organisms as Experimental Subjects: Animals have needs and behavior that are subject to experimental control and quantifiable measurement. Animals need to eat and sleep and desire to procreate. There are a set of behavior in which animals always engage. The sceintists can use motivations (eating, sleeping, sex) as a way of ocnducting experiments.
How is behaviorism a method?
Postive eugenics were encouraged at state fairs. There were "better babies" and "fitter family contests" geared toward large white families. These things occurred at fairs because eugenics sprang out of breeding and botany. ools of eugenics were family pedigree charts, which were given to judges at state fair. But to have better babies and fitter families, there must be something ot compare. This leads to negative eugenics. This was meant ot curb the reproductionof those who were deemed unfit- immigration, institutional restriction, forced sterilization, abortion, euthanizing.
How was positive eugenics encouraged?
People thanked Walter Freeman by the thousand. In 1943, When Veronica Marks procedure was conducted, this was the cutting edge, this was modern medicine. On the cusp of asylum expose and it is a life sentence. Stuff has only worsened. The new system is psychopharmacology in the 1960s. In 1943, one does not want to be in asylum, so you write to Freeman you pursue lobotomy.
I still continue to improve—really I have calmed down quite a bit since my last word to you. I do my own housework—except on Fridays when someone comes in for general cleaning. Don't believe I'm 100% at yet—feel very energetic—it's hard to read or listen to TV—for I want to be on the go—I walk about 2 or 3 miles a day, and have dis-continued my sleeping pills—also lost about 10 lbs in weigh ... I believe I'm more like I should have been after the operation in 1943 ... Our very best wishes to you and to your work., Veronica Marks to Walter Freeman, 1956
Immigration, industralization, urbanization, first world war, great depression. This context was appealing for eugenics. Reformers were concerned for the fate of the United States.
In what context did Eugenics arise in America?
Eugenics. Letter in the New Republic. Doctor euthanizes a mentally ill baby. This letter supports the euthanasia. The doctor claimed he was helping the country by preventing a drag to society. The writer was Helen Keller, though blind and death herself, was an avid eugenics. John Harvey Kelley, Margaret Zinger (Planned Parent Hood), Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Alexander Graham Bell were all pro-eugenics. Shows negative eugenics. Idiot was a a scientific term in eugenics, that classified in terms of intelligence.
Letter: ...such an existence is not worth while...It seems to me that the simplest, wisest thing to do would be to submit cases like that of the malformed idiot baby to a jury of expert physicians... A mental defective is almost sure to be a potential criminal. The evidence before a jury of physicians considering the case of an idiot would be exact and scientific. Their findings would be free from the prejudice and inaccuracy of untrained observation.
Eugenics. Refers to sham trial of Buck V. Bell used to pass Harry Laughlin's compulsory sterilization law. Three generation are Carrie, her mother, and her daughter. Both carrie and her daughter are labeled imbeciles at birth. Vivian Buck is labeled as just "not quite right" by a nurse, but there is no concrete evidence for this. Imbecile = scientific word.
Oliver Wendell Quote: We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind... Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. 1927 Three generations of imbeciles are enough
Francis Galton and Franz Gall. Galton is very interested in and influenced by phrenology and Franz Gall. Francis Galton is interested in genealogy, geography, statistics and mathematics, and he is also an inventor (of the dog whistle). Francis Galton was the cousin of Charles Darwin. Galton comes up with the theory of psychometrics. It is the art of imposing measurement and number upon operation of the mind. It combined intelligence testing plus measurement of head circumference. It harkens back to phrenology.Galton looked at his mental pedigree for fun and it became his theory. Galton starts reading at the age of 2 1/2 and does arithmetic by the age of 4. In college, he was prone to lots of nervous breakdowns/neurasthenia. In his mid-life, he begins to reflect on his achievement. He determines that his family was filled with brilliant members. Genius runs in the family and he sets out to prove it. He used his own pedigree chart. He compares his chart to that of other scientific and literary celebrities at the time. He determines the nature of hereditary genius in his 1869 book Hereditary Genius. Galton and his wife do not have children which harms his theory. Galton's eugenics is not taken up immediately in Britain and it first taken up social reformers but not scientists. It is similar to social Darwinism, which Herbert Spencer termed "survival of the fittest."
Origins of Eugenics
Eugenics. Theodore Roosevelt complained that immigrants have larger families than native citizens. He blamed white families, particularly women, for the imbalance and blamed them for race suicide. In civilization, women should strive to reproduce as much as they can. Efforts to promote and word large, fit, white families. P
Teddy Roosevelt Quote: The first essential in any civilization is that the man and women shall be father and mother of healthy children so that the race shall increase and not decrease. If that is not so, if through no fault of the society there is failure to increase, it is a great misfortune. If the failure is due to the deliberate and willful fault, then it is not merely a misfortune, it is one of those crimes of ease and selfindulgence, of shrinking from pain and effort and risk, which in the long run Nature punishes more heavily than any other.
Freeman's method of lobotomy. Easiest way to access the brain. Freeman uses an ice pick, enters through the eye, and jiggles part of the brain to remove parts of the frontal lobe. This procedure took off after it was used in the early 1940s. Over a 100 of these operations per day. Locally anaesthetized and leaves them awake.
Transorbital Lobotomy, American Journal of Psychiatry 105:10 (1949)
Walter Freeman goes to medical school specializing in neurosurgery and works in DC. Freeman hires James Watts and starts doing psychosurgery - surgery directly on the mind after learning about what's going on at Yale and reading an article about the Chimp results. Wants to apply the results to humans. The same year, he performs his first frontal lobotomies in 1936. A few procedures. Must rip away part of the skull and pull the frontal lobe out. He soon has an inspiration. Cranial anatomy - the easiest way to access the brain is to go in through the eye socket. Freeman uses an ice pick, enters through the eye, and jiggles part of the brain to remove parts of the frontal lobe. This procedure took off after it was used in the early 1940s. Over a 100 of these operations per day. Locally anaesthetized and leaves them awake.
Walter Freeman
Coined in Galton's book. Eugenics come from Greek. Eu means good and genics means birth. Gene and genetics will share the same linguistic root though they are not yet defined. Together, this means well-born. Galton's term shows his focus on the positive - the desirable traits inherited in birth. Does not address negative eugenics
What does eugenics literally mean?
Defining behavior is a little unclear - where is are the lines of behavior. Behavior is anything an organism does that is observable . The words organism and observable must be defined. Can a bacteria behave? Can a human cell behave? If the human cell or system behaves, is that the cells behavior or the animals behavior? If behavior requires a mind, a cell or bacterium can't behave. Also what does it mean to observe? With your eyes? With a microscope? Can you hear or smell it? Does it matter it if it something in principle observable? Behaviorism as it comes out the in 20th century is not a theory, it is method. The focus on behavior as the object of method of study. To be scientific in the 19th century, you had to quantify, measure, and observe thing. So Freud was less taken seriously.
What is behavior?
It is not obvious what is stimulus and response. Example: Darwin's model of the expression of emotions. Stimulus is feeling of internal feel and response of putting into your body. For James, the response is a bodily response to a conceptual stimulus, but then the bodily response because a stimulus for an internal emotional response. The same thing can be both stimulus and response.
What is confusing about stimulus and response?
At the time, there has been a blistering expose about the state of asylums. This photo shows overcrowding. Rage at the conditions in which people are being kept in asylums is at fever pitch. People are looking for a solution in asylums. This is the landscape into which human lobotomy emerges. Lobotomy is the solution to a pressing human problem.
What medical context did lobotomy arise in?
1. Accidental Personality Effects: Frontal lobotomy affected short-term memory - but it also surprisingly affected apes' personalities as well. Before the surgery, Becky would throw tantrums when she would fail. After the surgery, when her success dropped, she was docile. This peaked human surgeon's interest. 2. The Next Generation: Fultons' students went on to advance psychosurgery including James Watts, a leader in human lobotomy. Watts translated these techniques onto humans.
What were the legacies of animal lobotomy?
Laid the foundations for lobotomy. Harvey Cushing goes to Harvard medial school and takes a position specializing in the brain for the removal of all sorts of things. Trains in anesthetics and antiseptics. Cushing is an expert at extracting things in the brain that aren't the brain - extracting foreign bodies impacting an anatomically perfect brain. This is the precursor to lobotomy. Cushing leads into the world of lobtomy for two reasons. (1) He was the work'd first brain surgeon. He is known for his technical skill and contributed to giving brain surgery its reputation as really hard. (2)nk Cushing was known as meticulous and neurotic which led ot success in the operating room. Crushing's careful collecting of samples and his use of them in teaching helped cement the field's status. Cushing was a collector. He is obsessed with boundary work - making an archive (part brain, part text, part image) to make a new scientific field
Who was Harvey Cushing?
Fulton is a student of Cushings in the 20s. Fulton gets hired by Yale and Cushing follows him. Fulton believes that what you need to do is figure out relationship between lower and higher functions. Lower functions are things like the reflexes. He does a lot of work on the reflexes which gets him the Sterling professorship. He studies the reflexes in cats. He decerberates cats. ethods to decerebrate cats to study its reflexes. The cat is alive during all of them and then becomes a "preparation." The time take twenty minutes. All the dominate nerves must be cut. Lowest use of anaesethisa. Emergence of neurological things. He makes his name studying the automatic things, but what he is really interested in is higher faculties. He knows you cannot assume that dogs and cats have higher faculties (thanks to Morgans). Humans and apes. Fulton is a key part of making the first primatology laboratory in the United State at Yale med school in the 1920s and 30s. It is difficult to figure out where the higher functions are in these animals. Fulton finds it difficult to locate the higher faculties in apes. He then works with Yerkes
Who was John Fulton?