Visual System - History

History

In the second half of the 19th century, many motifs of the nervous system were identified such as the neuron doctrine and brain localisation, which related to the neuron being the basic unit of the nervous system and functional localisation in the brain, respectively. These would become tenets of the fledgling neuroscience and would support further understanding of the visual system.

The notion that the cerebral cortex is divided into functionally distinct cortices now known to be responsible for capacities such as touch (somatosensory cortex), movement (motor cortex), and vision (visual cortex), was first proposed by Franz Joseph Gall in 1810. Evidence for functionally distinct areas of the brain (and, specifically, of the cerebral cortex) mounted throughout the 19th century with discoveries by Paul Broca of the language center (1861), and Gustav Fritsch and Edouard Hitzig of the motor cortex (1871). Based on selective damage to parts of the brain and the functional effects this would produce (lesion studies), David Ferrier proposed that visual function was localised to the parietal lobe of the brain in 1876. In 1881, Hermann Munk more accurately located vision in the occipital lobe, where the primary visual cortex is now known to be.