5 brilliant books to demystify the brain

"Even as a child, Gall was fascinated by the brain and its connection with people's personalities, and so throughout his career, he intensely studied its anatomy while also gathering data on people's skull sizes and facial features. He came to believe that people's mental faculties were localized within specific brain regions. And because these regions molded the shape of people's skulls, a trained eye could divinate a person's capabilities for love, violence, greed, intelligence, and other traits simply by examining their cranial bumps and recessions."

"As you've probably guessed, Gall's hypotheses provided the basis for phrenology - though Gall never used that term, preferring the more lexically accurate but less marketable "cranioscopy." Today, researchers have rejected cranioscopy for its lack of empirical rigor, and the phrenology crazes that followed Gall's death - spearheaded by grifters like the Fowler Brothers - are recognized as pseudoscientific fads."

"But let's not be too hard on the old Gall. The human brain is an incredibly complex organ, and his research represents some of the earliest attempts to understand it scientifically. In the 200 years since, neuroscientists have learned a lot about the brain's relationship with intelligence and personality, as well as how its unique regions play both specialized and coordinated roles in bodily and cognitive functions."

Franz Joseph Gall proposed that mental faculties are localized in specific brain regions and that skull shape reflects those regions. He studied brain anatomy and collected data on skull sizes and facial features to support his hypothesis. Gall termed his approach cranioscopy, which later spawned phrenology and popular crazes led by figures like the Fowler Brothers. Empirical evaluation later discredited cranioscopy and labeled phrenology pseudoscientific. Nevertheless, Gall's work represented early scientific efforts to link brain structure with personality and cognition. Neuroscience has since advanced understanding of regional and network brain functions, while many questions and myths about the brain persist.

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