Brain Imaging, Psychopathology and Neuropathology

Abstract

The view that psychiatric illnesses were the result of disorders of the brain gained support during the 18th century (Hunter and MacAlpine 1963) and was later developed by Griesinger, Professor of Psychiatry and Neurology in Berlin. He considered that normal mental processes are dependent upon the integrity of the brain and that lesions in some parts of the brain are more likely than those of others to be associated with mental disorder (Griesinger 1857). This idea that the brain was the seat of insanity led to the view that psychiatric illnesses could be investigated in a similar way to other illnesses, and in Germany there were extensive and sometimes successful attempts by Alzheimer, Wernicke and others to correlate psychiatric conditions with neuropathology. Although neuropathological techniques were limited, replicable findings could be made in relation to both gross post-mortem change and histology. It was on the basis of the work of these neuropathologists that Kraepelin stated in 1907, “The fact is decisive that the morbid anatomy has disclosed not simple in-adequacy of the nervous system but destructive morbid processes as the back-ground of the clinical picture”.