ABSTRACT
Historical records from the Middle East suggest that the importance of the brain as a control centre was first considered at least 5000 years ago, although for many the heart was viewed as the organ of thinking and other mental processes. The ancient Greeks also debated the relative merits of heart and brain. Hippocrates and Plato both had some understanding of brain structure, and attributed various aspects of behaviour to it. Hippocrates warned against probing a wound in the brain in case it might lead to paralysis in the opposite side of the body. In Rome, the physician Galen, who spent a number of years working as a surgeon to gladiators, was also only too well aware of the effects that brain damage could have on behaviour.
