Altukhov, Nikolai

Entsefalometricheskiye issledovaniya mozga v svyazi s polom, vozrastom i cherepnymi ukazatelyami [i.e. En ephalographic Research of the Brain in Connection with Sex, Age and Skull Measurements]

Publisher Information: Moscow: 1891.

The First Stereotact INstrument for Mapping the Brain

Altukhov, Nikolai. Entsefalometriya mozga cheloveka v otnoshenii k polu, vozrastu i cherepnomu ukazatelyu [in Cyrillic]. iii, 55, [1]pp. 6 folding plates, text illustrations. Moscow: Izdatelstvo Moscovskogo Universiteta, 1891. 265 x 180 mm. (mostly unopened). Original printed wrappers, spine repaired, edges strengthened. Minor foxing but very good. Presentation Copy, inscribed by the author to Konstantin Alekseevich Satunin (1863-1915), a Russian zoologist who described many previously undiscovered mammals of Russia and Central Asia.

First Edition. In 1889, nearly 20 years before Horsley and Clarke published their paper on the use of stereotaxy to examine the brain, Dmitrii Zernov, a professor of anatomy at Moscow University, invented the first prototype of a stereotaxic instrument, an arc-based device for cerebral mapping that he called an encephalometer. In a preliminary communication on his device, published in the Russian journal Trudy Fiziko-meditsynskogo Obshestva Moscovskogo Universiteta (Vol. 2 [1889]: 70-80), Zernov stated:

"I built an instrument which enables to project the pattern of cranial sutures or cerebral sulci or deep-seated brain structures on the spherical surface and then transform it onto the plane similar to the projection of the terrestrial globe on the map. The localization of a given point on the brain surface is determined by the degrees of latitude and longitude (quoted in Lichterman, p. 1)."

Two years later Zernov’s student Nikolai Altukhov gave a complete description of the encephalometer in the present thesis, which included six detailed projection maps based on 40 post-mortem examinations. “Projections of anterior and posterior parts of the corpus callosum, insula and some basal ganglia (thalamus, nucleus lenticularis and caput nuclei caudate) were localized on the surface of the head. [Altukhov] also noted similarity in female and pediatric brains and concluded that the former are underdeveloped” (Lichterman, p. 3). Since both Zernov and Altukhov’s papers were published only in Russian, Western scientists did not learn of Zernov’s encephalometer until much later. Lichterman, “The first instrument for cerebral mapping: Zernov’s encephalometer and its modifications,” Kopf Carrier no. 61 (April 2005): 1-5.

Book Id: 43779

Price: $3,750.00