ABSTRACT
Phrenology belongs to a never-ending trend—sometimes verging on fanaticism (Noel and Carlson 1970, 694)—that, for many centuries, strives to correlate anatomy with behaviors and ultimately with destiny (Kern 1975). This trend aims, whatever the cost, at ascribing behaviors and abilities to limited and specific macroscopical or, more recently (although not really more successful), biological features (Grüsser 1990). As the centuries passed, these presumably-involved features included, among others, the general characteristics of the face (physiognomony: Aristotle, see Fœrster 1893; lavaterism, see Jaton 1988), lines of the forehead (metoposcopy, see Cardano 1658), bumps of the skull (phrenology, see Gall and Spurzheim 1810-1819), and the number of longitudinal frontal gyri (quaternary theory of the frontal lobe, see Benedikt 1879). Some biological features were of a genetic (e.g., supernumerary chromosome, see Jacobs et al. 1965) or molecular (e.g., neuronal nitric oxide synthase, see Nelson et al. 1995) nature.
