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Plato also speculated that the brain was the seat of the rational part of the soul. He believed that the brain was not only involved with sensation-since most specialized organs (e.g., eyes, ears, tongue) are located in the head near the brain-but was also the seat of intelligence. The view that the heart was the source of consciousness was not challenged until the time of the Greek physician Hippocrates.
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According to Herodotus, the first step of mummification was to "take a crooked piece of iron, and with it draw out the brain through the nostrils, thus getting rid of a portion, while the skull is cleared of the rest by rinsing with drugs."
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It was believed at the time that the heart was the seat of intelligence. In Egypt, from the late Middle Kingdom onwards, the brain was regularly removed in preparation for mummification. Įarly views on the function of the brain regarded it to be a "cranial stuffing" of sorts. Manuscripts dating to 1700 BC indicate that the Egyptians had some knowledge about symptoms of brain damage. Trepanation, the surgical practice of either drilling or scraping a hole into the skull for the purpose of curing head injuries or mental disorders, or relieving cranial pressure, was first recorded during the Neolithic period. The earliest study of the nervous system dates to ancient Egypt. Illustration from Gray's Anatomy (1918) of a lateral view of the human brain, featuring the hippocampus among other neuroanatomical features