Horace Winchell Magoun
Horace Winchell Magoun ( born June 23, 1907 in Philadelphia, † March 6, 1991 in Santa Monica ) was an American neuroanatomist and neuroscientist. He is known for his work on the neurophysiology and anatomy, especially his discovery of the influence of the activity of the reticular formation on the activity of the cerebrum.
Life and work
Magoun earned a bachelor's degree in 1929 at Rhode Iceland State College in 1931 and a master's degree in zoology from Syracuse University in upstate New York. At Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois Magoun 1934 acquired at Stephen Walter Ranson a Ph.D. using the Horsley -Clarke apparatus, an apparatus for stereotactic study of vertebrate brains with the work The Central Path of the Pupilloconstrictor Reflex in Response to Light. In the following years, Magoun dealt with the pupillary reflex, but also with the neurological basis of behavior.
According to Ranson's death in 1942, his research group was disbanded and Magoun turned with support from the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis ( March of Dimes ) neuropathology and neurophysiology of the bulbar form of poliomyelitis to. He found that in this form of disease of the reticular nucleus is damaged. Animal experiments showed that stimulation of the nucleus resulted in inhibition or activation of motor neurons depending on the location of the stimulus, which in addition to the involvement of the pyramidal system a of the extrapyramidal system was adopted Magoun. In addition, Magoun dealt with muscle physiology.
Magoun worked in Chicago with a group led by Percival Bailey and Warren McCulloch at the Illinois Neuropsychiatric Institute. Together they published several papers on tremor and efferent pathways to the reticular formation. 1947 brought Magoun Donald B. Lindsley at Northwestern University, who brought the knowledge of the electroencephalogram (EEG). In 1948 Giuseppe Moruzzi of the University of Pisa as a visiting professor with support from the Rockefeller Foundation to Magoun and both published a very influential paper on the changes in the EEG under reticular stimulation of the formation, on the one waking ( arousal ) of the same. After Moruzzis return to Italy Magoun, Lindsley and co-workers ( among them the later transplant surgeon Thomas E. Starzl ) the work continued and were able to influence the reticular formation in wakefulness, show intellectual ability, deliberate movements and behavior in general.
1950 Magoun joined as head of anatomy at the University of California, Los Angeles ( UCLA). Due to lack of space in Los Angeles taught Magoun his laboratory first at 30 miles away Long Beach Veterans Administration Hospital, before 1961, a ten -storey Research Center for Neurosciences ( Brain Research Institute, BRI ) on the main location of the University in Westwood, Los Angeles, under the direction of John Douglas French was opened. The facility was funded for many years by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH ). For its parent institution, the National Institutes of Health ( NIH), Magoun was repeatedly advisory capacity in key committees.
On BRI many influential projects were launched, including the Brain Information Service, the Data Processing Laboratory for Computer -assisted analysis of the EEG, a Biosphere Programme for the space program of NASA and the Neuroscience History Archives to document the history of neuroscience. Magoun was instrumental in the founding of the International Brain Research Organization ( IBRO ). From 1962 to 1972 Magoun was dean for graduate study. In this position, he sat down one particularly for the promotion of minorities at the university and promoted scientific exchanges with Japan. Then Magoun worked for two years for the Fellowship Office of the National Research Council in Washington, DC, before returning in 1974 to UCLA, where he helped set up a department of behavioral science within the psychiatric hospital and the history of neuroscience, and the relationship of mind and brain turning.
1931 married Horace W. Magoun Jeannette Alice Jackson. The couple had three children.
Writings (selection )
- With R. Rhines: Spasticity: The Stretch Reflex and Extrapyramidal Systems. Springfield, Ill.: Charles C Thomas. 1948
- The Waking Brain. Springfield, Ill.: Charles C Thomas. 1958
- With JD French and DB Lindsley: An American Contribution to Neuroscience: The Brain Research Institute, UCLA, 1959-1984. Los Angeles:
University of California, Brain Research Institute, 1984.
- With LH Marshall: Discoveries in the Human Brain: Neuroscience Prehistory, Brain Structure, and Function. Totowa, N. J.: Humana Press.
- American Neuroscience in the Twentieth Century: Confluence of the Neural, Behavioral, and Communicative Streams. Lisse, The Netherlands: A. A. Balkema. 2003 ( posthumously )