On Fri, 14 Jan 2011 12:44:00 -0800, Patrick Dolan wrote: >According to the paper below (and I've heard Stan Finger talk on this), >Bykov was doing split brain research on dogs in the 1920s but Sperry >chose not to cited him. > >It is interesting to look through books and not see any functional notice of >the corpus callosum until the 1950s. > >Kanne, S. M. and Finger, S. (1999). Konstantin M. Bykov and the discovery >of the role of the corpus callosum. Journal of the History of Medicine and >Allied >Sciences, 54, 572-590. > http://jhmas.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/54/4/572.pdf
A few points: (1) A two page version of the Kanne & Finger article was published in the journal Brain Research Bulletin at roughly the same time; see: Stanley Finger, Stephen M. Kanne, The discovery and rediscovery of the role of the corpus callosum, Brain Research Bulletin, Volume 50, Issues 5-6, November-December 1999, Pages 419-420, ISSN 0361-9230, DOI: 10.1016/S0361-9230(99)00173-2. (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6SYT-3Y3RRTN-21/2/72495110e71e2d292e4b619f616f07bd ) (2) The complete story of Bykov may not be accurately told by Kanne & Finger/Finger & Kanne. Glickstein & Berlucchi (2008) track down the original Russian research article that was summarized in a German abstract and find that there are discrepencies between the two; see: Mitchell Glickstein, Giovanni Berlucchi, K.M. Bykov and transfer between the hemispheres, Brain Research Bulletin, Volume 77, Issues 2-3, 30 September 2008, Pages 117-123, ISSN 0361-9230, DOI: 10.1016/j.brainresbull.2008.06.009. (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6SYT-4T2RSSH-2/2/9a735f678756fea351ad3910e09ed131 ) I quote their final comment: |Myers, working in Sperry’s laboratory [10] showed that if visual |information is restricted to one hemisphere of a cat by cutting the |optic chiasm and the corpus callosum, the animal can learn a visual |discrimination task with either eye open, but remain completely |naïve when tested with the previously closed eye. One of us, also |working with Roger Sperry (1960), found essentially the same result |in callosum-sectioned monkeys learning a tactile discrimination |[5]. It was easy to train opposite responses on the two hands. In our |paper we cited a paper by Bykov from Pavlov’s lab which had been |written many years earlier, but appeared to have similar results. At |the time, the only source on Bykov’s experiment that was available |to us was from the abstract in a German journal, translated above. | |The full article is at variance with the abstract in one important |point. In the abstract the conditioning is cited as salivary. It was |not. The animals were trained to lift a leg in response to a pinprick. |The similarity between the conditioned and unconditioned stimuli |make the interpretation of the results of the training hard to interpret. |The training appears to have produced what Pavlov called a |defensive conditioned response. | |The surgery seems poor at best. As early as 1890 Von Koranyi |[7] had attempted a similar procedure. He concluded that section |of the corpus callosum, if it can be done without damaging other |brain structures, either directly or by bleeding produces no obvious |deficits. Even in Bykov’s surviving animals in which the callosum |had been sectioned there was a stormy post-operative course, and |many residual symptoms, indicating the presence of damage to |brain structures in addition to the callosum. | |The failure to cite Anrep [1] may reflect his having left the Soviet |union shortly after the 1917 Bolshevik revolution, but it was Anrep |whom Pavlov cites (1927) as having demonstrated the fact that |if a conditioned stimulus was applied to one side of the body, |the conditioned response would also be elicited by stimulation of |the contralateral point on the body surface. The same ignoring of |Anrep’s work is seen in subsequent Russian studies of the role of |the corpus callosum in interhemispheric transfer, e.g. Bianki [2]. | |In a historical review of studies of the corpus callosum, Kanne |and Finger [6] reviewed Bykov’s work in an extensive article. They |too relied on the German abstract, which now can be compared to |Bykoff’s full report. I suggest reading the translation of Bykov & Speranski provided by Glickstein & Berlucchi; they have comments (in italics) at key points. (3) Just for laughs: Sperry in his 1964 Scientific American article "The Great Cerebral Commisure" provides some sense of what the U.S. research community's opinion was in 1940 on the importance of the corpus callosum by the following quote by Warren McCulloch: |"to aid in the transmission of epileptic seizures from one to the |other side of the body" (page 42) -Mike Palij New York University [email protected] --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=7900 or send a blank email to leave-7900-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
