INTRODUCTION TO THE INAUGURAL LECTURE OF PROFESSOR ADOLF BECK GIVEN AT THE PHYSIOLOGY DEPARTMENT OF UNIVERSITY OF LEMBERG-LW OW IN 1895
Journal Title: Праці Наукового товариства ім. Шевченка - Year 2015, Vol 43, Issue 2
Abstract
Exactly 120 years ago, Professor Adolf Beck (1863-1942), the founder o f Physiology Department of the Lviv National Medical University who stood at the cradle o f studies of the manifestation o f the electrical brain activity, fought political discrimination and racism (anti-Semitism) on his way to becoming one of the 20th century’s leading thinkers, delivered an inaugural lecture at the Physiology Department o f the University of Lemberg-Lwow (nowadays Lviv National Medical University in Lviv, Ukriane). Unfortunately, it remains unknown to a wide medical audience in the 21st century. Adolf Beck was a pioneer in the development and use of neurophysiological and psychophysiological methods for investigation of the cerebral cortex. Beck’s fate was closely tied to the turbulent political and war history o f Galicia, a region of the Austrian-Hungarian empire, and its two capitals, Krakau (nowadays Cracow) and Lemberg. He performed his influential electrophysiological work at the Jagiellonian University in Cracow and was invited to organize Physiology Department at the Medical Faculty in Lviv, where Dr. Beck became a professor o f the Jan Kazimierz University in 1895. As professor o f the Medical Faculty, he produced 180 publications and was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Physiology. Dr. Beck’s initial interest was in the electrophysiology o f the nervous system. In 1890, his article about the spontaneous and evoked electrical activity in the brain was published in the ‘Centralblatt für Physiologie’, a leading European Physiology magazine. Beck accurately localized sensory modalities o f the cerebral cortex using electrical and sensory stimulation while recording electrical activities. In doing this, Beck also found the spontaneous oscillations o f the brain potentials, and showed that these fluctuations were not related to heart and breathing rhythms, but had to be regarded as genuine electrical brain activities. In the 1890s Beck studied parts o f the cerebral cortex that reacted to stimulation with electronegativity, and was the first to record ‘evoked potentials’. Moreover, Beck discovered a new element: a decrease in the amplitude o f the potentials upon sensory stimulation. Thus, he was the first to describe the phenomenon, which is now known as the desynchronization of the EEG. It is important to note that Beck’s research was not limited to neurophysiology, he also worked in the field of general Physiology, such as study o f visceral and sensory functions, and laboratory medicine. However, Beck’s groundbreaking work and ideas were unknown to the wide scientific community for a long time due to various factors, including wars, political and ideological, grounds and restricted international contacts between different scientific groups. After the WWII, Adolf Beck was mainly disregarded until M.A.B. Brazier (1904-1995), neuroscientist, electroencephalographer, computer analyst, author and editor par excellence, international organizer, and a prominent expert in the history o f neuroscience, translated Beck’s dissertation into English (1973). Scientific views and perspectives o f the great mind of Beck are again brought to the attention o f contemporary scientists in the field o f Physiology and Neuroscience. Thus, in this light, the publication o f an English version o f Beck’s impressive inaugural lecture from 1895 "Life phenomena and their methods of investigation” (1895), which was first published in Polish, should be considered.
Authors and Affiliations
Anton M. L. COENEN
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