Oskar and Cécile Vogt, Lenin's brain and the bumble-bees of the Black Forest.

Abstract

Oskar Vogt (1870-1955) was a prominent German neurologist and neuroanatomist with a strong interest in the pathogenesis of brain diseases. Together with his wife Cécile (1875-1962), he published landmark papers on the cyto- and myelo-architecture of the brain and the functional anatomy of the basal ganglia. He developed the concept of pathoclisis, i.e., the selective vulnerability of specific neuronal populations in the CNS. In the 1920's, Vogt created a multi-disciplinary brain research institute, the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Hirnforschung in Berlin-Buch. After Lenin's death in 1924, Oskar Vogt was called to Moscow where he formed a new brain research institute, with the main purpose to investigate the revolutionary's brain. After being dismissed from office by the Nazi government in 1937, the Vogts continued their work in a privately funded institute in Neustadt, the Black Forest.