Neurophysiology Of Memory Research Articles

Antoniana Margarita: Gómez Pereira, Francisco Lobato y los antecedentes del mecanicismo cerebral en el Renacimiento español

The year 2000 is the fifth century of the birth, in Medina del Campo (Vallodolid, Spain) of licenciado Perea' (Gomez Perea or Pereira). A man of the Renaissance, he was an outstanding doctor, humanist, theologist, nominalist philosopher, naturalist and practical engineer. He developed the first modern theory of behavior, based purely on mechanicistic principles, describing his ideas in a text known by the curious title of Antoniana Margarita. The objective of this paper is to pay him homage on the fifth centenary of his birth, making a historiographic study of Gomez Perea and his works, with particular emphasis on the ideological basis and its relationship with Renaissance hydraulic engineering, collaborating with his colleague Francisco Lobato, author of one of the only two pretechnological codices of sixteenth century Spain. The book Antoniana Margarita is written in Renaissance Latin and was published in Medina del Campo in 1554. It represents the first truly modern approach to brain function which excludes the providencialist concepts of Galen involving the soul and the spirit, in vogue until then, transmitted through the Arab and Scholastic tradition. Analyzing his theory of the automatism of animals' Perea made the first description ever of the reflex arc and the conditioned reflex. He also established a topographical model of the brain in which he sketched the functioning of the prefrontal cortex and neurophysiology of memory. Perea was the immediate forerunner of Neuropsychology and of the methodology and organicist thought which predominates in modern Neurobiology. He was also a visionary of the Evolution of Darwin and of modern aetiology.

Book reviews

Book reviewed in this article:Talking to Children: Language Input and Acquisition. Edited by Catherine E. Snow & Charles A. Ferguson.Toward a Psychology of Reading. Edited by Arthur S. Reber & Don L. Scarborough.The Development of Cognitive Processes. Edited by Vernon Hamilton & M. D. Vernon.Child Psychiatry: Modern Approaches. Edited by M. Rutter & L. Hersov.Transracial Adoption. By Rita James Simon & Howard Altstein.Crime and Personality, new rev. ed. By H. J. Eysenck.Human Diversity: Its Causes and Social Significance. Edited by B. D. Davis & P. Flaherty.Who Do You Think You Are? By Oliver Gillie.The Neurophysiology of Memory. By A. R. Luria.The Sleep Instinct. By Ray Meddis.Hypnosis: Trance as a Coping Mechanism. By F. H. Frankel.Methodologies of Hypnosis: A Critical Appraisal of Contemporary Paradigms of Hypnosis. By D. W. Sheehan & C. W. Perry.Machine Intelligence 8. Edited by E. W. Elcock & D. Michie.The Psychology of Place. By David Canter.Multivariate Analysis in Behavioural Research. By A. E. Maxwell.Social Exchange Theory: Its Structure and Influence in Social Psychology. By J. K. Chadwick‐Jones.New Forms of Work Organization. By Lisl Klein.