Norman Geschwind

Norman Geschwind ( born January 8, 1926 in New York City; † November 4, 1984 in Boston ) was an American neurologist and neuroscientist.

Life

Geschwind was trained medical at Harvard Medical School and London. From 1955 he worked at the Boston City Hospital. He brash 1956-1958 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for Biology of muscle diseases. He then moved to the Boston Veterans Administration Hospital. Since 1962 he was a professor and from 1966 he headed the department of neurology at Boston University.

Scientific achievements

In Boston, he worked mainly in the field of speech processing in the brain and the cortical language (aphasia ). A classic model of language processing is called Wernicke - Geschwind model. He also dealt with the division of responsibilities between the cerebral hemispheres and proved the still controversial at the time functional asymmetry of the brain.

Shortly before his death Geschwind developed with his colleagues Peter Behan and Albert Galaburda a comprehensive and far-reaching hypothesis for the lateralization of the brain. It is now called after the three scientists as Geschwind - Behan - Galaburda model.

Works

  • Norman Geschwind, Orrin Devinsky, Steven C. Schachter: Selected Publications on Language, Behavior and Epilepsy. Boston, Butterworth -Heinemann, 1997, ISBN 0-7506-9753-9
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