THE FIRST BRAINWAVE RECORDINGS
When we
want to know if someone is “legally dead” we look at the brain waves – the
electroencephalogram. This sophisticated diagnostic tool also helps diagnose a
wide range of other neurologic problems, especially seizure disorders. The
first electroencephalograms (EEGs), however, were performed for another
purpose.
The first to record
human brain electrical activity was Hans Berger, a professor of Psychiatry at
the University of Jena,
Germany. Berger, born in 1873, was the son of a
physician and grandson of a celebrated poet, Friedrich Rüchert. Without finishing university studies he enlisted in the military, after which he decided
on a medical career. On receiving his degree he was taken on as assistant
to Otto Biswanger, Professor of Psychiatry at Jena, who was working on general
paresis (tertiary syphilis of the central nervous system), a common problem in
mental hospitals of the time. In the 1890s, though, Berger veered off into other
realms: the relation of mind and matter and the conservation of energy in the brain.
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| Hans Berger (Wikipedia) |
The principle of
conservation of energy had been established during the nineteenth century, and
some investigators sought to apply these principles to the brain. The Viennese
neuropsychiatrist Theodor Meynert, for example, felt that when energy is expended
in an area to produce a thought or action, an equivalent energy must be
transferred from another part. Meynert and a colleague, Alfred Lehmann,
surmised that energy was distributed around through changes in blood flow, regulated
from centers deeper in the brain. Brain energy could be in the form of heat,
electrical energy, or “psychic” (mental) energy, all derived from chemical
(nutritional) sources.
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| Theodor Meynert (Wikipedia) |
These ideas were
attractive to Berger. He believed in an interaction between “mind and brain”,
as opposed to another school, led by John Hughlings Jackson, a British
neurologist, that insisted on a separation between brain physiology and psychologic
processes. Berger's challenge was to demonstrate how the interaction happened. He started by measuring local blood flows as a marker for energy changes. He
studied patients who had undergone brain surgery and were left with holes in
the cranium, over which the brain was covered only with dura mater and skin. By placing
small plethysmographs onto these gaps he measured changes in pressure after
mental stimuli (light, sounds, thoughts) as a gauge of local blood flow. He
noted increases in flow with pleasant sensations and decreases with unpleasant
ones. Although interesting, the work was fraught with technical difficulties. These studies, however, were the forerunners of
the ubiquitous functional MRI scans of today that demonstrate changes in
regional blood flow in response to mental phenomena.
He then tried
measuring brain temperatures during brain surgery and recorded changes on
emerging from anesthesia, during arithmetic calculations, etc. Though he
generated much data, nothing meaningful came of it. So he turned to looking at
electrical energy. Berger applied pairs of tiny electrodes under the scalp, first
in patients with cranial defects (later flat electrodes over intact skull). He
used a sensitive string galvanometer made for EKG, moving later to more sensitive Siemens oscilloscopes.
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| From Berger's first publication. Top line is EEG from 2 leads on scalp of 36 year-old bald male, placed fore and aft. Second line is EKG, third line is clock at 1/10 second intervals. |
Various stimuli, such as opening the eyes to
bright light, produced different patterns, as previously seen in animals. He viewed seizures
as an example of the consumption of all available brain energy, thus explaining the
sleep that followed a seizure. He identified the basic alpha and beta wave patterns, though his interpretations have been modified.
During this work
Berger became secretive, working alone, avoiding discussions of his ideas with
colleagues and in his lectures. His diaries indicate a
depressive state of mind, frequent discouragement and insecurity. Finally, in 1929,
after about 5 years of work, he published what is now a “classic” paper: “On
the Human Encephalogram” (Über das Elektrenkephalogramm des Menschen), coining the new term “encephalogram” in the paper. Other papers followed.
The work was received
with some apathy in Germany, but was picked up by others, especially by Edgar
Douglas Adrian at
Cambridge, who was recording electrical impulses from
individual axons (and who won a Nobel Prize in 1932). Adrian expanded the EEG work, opening it to the wider scientific community, and making Berger well known outside Germany.
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| Edgar Douglas Adrian (Wikipedia) |
Berger fell in love
with a laboratory technician before WWI, a Baroness - Ursula von Bülow, whom he
married despite the social difference between them. He was called away during
WWI as a psychiatrist near the Western front, but had few duties. Over time he
was promoted and became a professor and director of the Neurology and Psychiatric Clinic at Jena
University. He is described as an excellent diagnostician, but made almost no close friends and was considered “shy,
reticent, and inhibited” by a colleague (Ginzberg).
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| University of Jena about 1910 (Wikipedia) |
As Nazism penetrated
Germany in the 1930s the University of Jena was affected. Berger did not like the Nazis, did not join the party, and any papers he gave abroad had to be censured. But it has been recently reported that Berger accepted a position on the Erbsgesundheitgericht, the Court for Eugenics, in Jena. Nazi Germany
had passed several eugenics laws, allowing for the sterilization of persons
with various categories of neurologic and psychiatric diseases, such as
dementia, deafness, multiple sclerosis, alcoholism, etc. Methods included tubal
ligations, vasectomies, and radiation of gonads. Berger served on two levels of
the regional Court, passing judgment on cases for sterilization during 1938.
On
reaching age 65 that year he took mandatory University retirement and left the Court. His
previous congestive heart failure worsened and he became more depressed. A final diary entry speaks of despair, sleepless nights, brooding, self accusations, and includes,"...I yearningly wished for my early end"(Gloor). Ten days later he committed suicide by hanging.
SOURCES:
Gloor, P. "Hans Berger and the Discovery of the
Electroencephalogram". Electroencephalography and Clinical
Neurophysiology, 1969, Suppl 28, pp 1-36.
Ginzberg,
R. “Three Years with Hans Berger: A Contribution to
His Biography.
J Hist Med and Allied Sci. 1949, pp
361-71.
Millett,
D. “Hans Berger: From Psychic Energy to the EEG”.
Perspectives in Biol and Med, 2001. 44(4): 522-42.
Berger,
H. “Über das Elektroenkephalogramm des Menschen”.
1929; Arch Psych und Nervenkrankeiten, 87:
527-70.
Zeidman,
LA, et al. “New Revelations About Hans Berger, Father
of the Electroencephalogram (EEG), and his Ties to the Third
Reich”. 2014; J Child Neurology 29(7): 1002-1010.
Finger, S. Minds Behind the Brain: A History of the Pioneers and
their Discoveries. 2000, Oxford U. Press.
