Alcmaeon put the mind in the head, Hippocrates called epilepsy a brain disorder, Aristotle bet on the heart, Alexandrian anatomists traced the nerves, and Galen proved it with pigs.
History of Neuroscience
Beginner
Greek and Roman Ideas About the Brain
The Editors
March 15, 2026
2 min read
In plain English
The ancient Greeks argued over whether the mind lived in the heart or the brain. Doctors who looked closely — and dissected — increasingly sided with the brain. Galen, a Roman-era physician, ran experiments that settled it for over a thousand years.
Beginner level: No background needed. Everyday language, everyday examples — the place to start.
Concepts to know first
Greek thinkers were divided about where the mind lives. Around the 5th century BCE, Alcmaeon of Croton — who probably dissected the eye — argued that the senses connect to the brain and that the brain is the seat of understanding.
The Hippocratic view
The Hippocratic text On the Sacred Disease (around 400 BCE) insisted that epilepsy was not a punishment from the gods but a natural disorder of the brain. It went further: "from the brain, and from the brain only, arise our pleasures, joys, laughter and jests, as well as our sorrows, pains, griefs and tears". It is one of the most remarkable sentences in the history of medicine.
Aristotle's heart
Aristotle (384–322 BCE) disagreed. He noticed the heart is warm and central, the brain cool and bloodless to the touch, and concluded that the heart was the seat of the mind and the brain a radiator that cooled the blood. Because of his enormous authority, the cardiocentric view lingered for centuries.
Alexandria and the nerves
In the 3rd century BCE, the anatomists Herophilus and Erasistratus of Alexandria dissected human bodies — a brief window in antiquity when this was permitted. They described the brain's ventricles, distinguished the cerebrum from the cerebellum, and traced nerves, separating those for sensation from those for movement.
Galen's pigs
Galen of Pergamon (129 – c. 216 CE), physician to Roman emperors, made the case by experiment. In a famous public demonstration he cut the recurrent laryngeal nerves of a squealing pig; the animal fell silent though it still struggled. The voice, he concluded, was controlled by the brain through nerves — not by the heart. Galen also taught that "animal spirits" made in the brain's ventricles flowed through hollow nerves to move the body. That theory was wrong, but it dominated Western and Islamic medicine for some 1,400 years.
Everyday examples & things to try
Real world
The squealing pig experiment
Galen's demonstration is an early example of a lesion experiment: interrupt one part of a system and observe what stops working. Modern neuroscientists do the same thing far more precisely — for instance by switching off specific neurons with light.
Key takeaways
- Alcmaeon and the Hippocratic writers placed the mind and emotions in the brain.
- Aristotle thought the heart was the seat of the mind and the brain a cooling organ.
- Galen proved the brain controls the voice via nerves, but his 'animal spirits' theory was wrong.
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