This thesis explores the relationship between epilepsy, the brain, and the mind from the nineteenth century to contemporary neuroscience. I begin by exploring the relationship between the experimental animal and the epileptic patient in the nineteenth century through a focus on the work of the animal experimentalist David Ferrier and the epileptician John Hughlings Jackson. I continue to explore this relationship through an analysis of the work of animal experimentalist Charles Sherrington and its influence upon the twentieth century epileptic ian and brain experimentalist Wilder Penfield, who conducted experiments upon the brains of his epileptic patients using electrical stimulation. I then explore the use of epileptic patients in the split brain research conducted by Roger Woolcot Sperry, for which he won the Nobel Prize in 1983. I develop the thesis by exploring the relationship between the epileptic and the hysteric in the nineteenth century in both Sigmund Freud's work and Jackson's work; and I relate this to the contemporary manifestation and diagnosis of 'psychogenic seizures' in epilepsy medicine. Finally, I explore the relationship between the brain and the mind and epilepsy as they are constituted within the imaging technologies. I conclude by arguing that both contemporary neuroscience and sociological engagement with neuroscience is one in which the brain is occluded by the mind rather than is currently supposed that the mind is replaced by the brain.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:658323 |
| Date | January 2012 |
| Creators | Leahy, Deirdre |
| Publisher | Lancaster University |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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