Misplaced Pages

#191808

99-456: The word neurophysiology originates from the Greek word νεῦρον meaning "nerve" and physiology meaning knowledge about the function of living systems (φύσις meaning "nature" and -λογία meaning "knowledge"). Neurophysiology has been a subject of study since as early as 4,000 B.C. In the early B.C. years, most studies were of different natural sedatives like alcohol and poppy plants. In 1700 B.C.,

198-584: A pial capsule. The pineal gland consists mainly of pinealocytes , but four other cell types have been identified. As it is quite cellular (in relation to the cortex and white matter), it may be mistaken for a neoplasm . The human pineal gland grows in size until about 1–2 years of age, remaining stable thereafter, although its weight increases gradually from puberty onwards. The abundant melatonin levels in children are believed to inhibit sexual development, and pineal tumors have been linked with precocious puberty . When puberty arrives, melatonin production

297-489: A "mystery" gland with mystical , metaphysical , and occult theories surrounding its perceived functions. The earliest recorded description of the pineal gland is from the Greek physician Galen in the 2nd century C.E. According to Galen, Herophilus (325–280 B.C.E.) had already considered the structure as a kind of valve that partitioned the brain chambers, particularly for the flow of vital spirits ( pneuma ). Specifically,

396-642: A "pineal-eye" as a reference to a blind-spot in Western rationality, and an organ of excess and delirium. This conceptual device is explicit in his surrealist texts, The Jesuve and The Pineal Eye . In the late 19th century Madame Blavatsky , founder of theosophy , identified the pineal gland with the Hindu concept of the third eye , or the Ajna chakra . This association is still popular today. The pineal gland has also featured in other religious contexts, such as in

495-577: A basis for coinages: anthropology , photography , telephony , isomer , biomechanics , cinematography , etc. Together with Latin words , they form the foundation of international scientific and technical vocabulary ; for example, all words ending in -logy ('discourse'). There are many English words of Greek origin . Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European language family. The ancient language most closely related to it may be ancient Macedonian , which, by most accounts,

594-460: A body and a soul. In the Passions , he split man up into a body and a soul and emphasized that the soul is joined to the whole body by "a certain very small gland situated in the middle of the brain's substance and suspended above the passage through which the spirits in the brain's anterior cavities communicate with those in its posterior cavities". Descartes gave importance to the structure as it

693-457: A boost to the then-new field of chronobiology . Of the endocrine organs, the function of the pineal gland was the last to be discovered. The notion of a "pineal-eye" is central to the philosophy of the French writer Georges Bataille , which is analyzed at length by literary scholar Denis Hollier in his study Against Architecture . In this work Hollier discusses how Bataille uses the concept of

792-481: A case of hydrocephalus , or fluid filling the brain. In the same year, Bartolomeo Eustachi studied the optic nerve , mainly focusing on its origin in the brain. In 1564, Giulio Cesare Aranzio discovered the hippocampus , naming it such due to its shape resemblance to a sea horse . In 1621, Robert Burton published The Anatomy of Melancholy , which looked at the loss of important characters in one's life as leading to depression. In 1649, René Descartes studied

891-408: A chain reaction of enzymatic events within the pineal gland that regulates circadian rhythms . In humans and other mammals, the light signals necessary to set circadian rhythms are sent from the eye through the retinohypothalamic system to the suprachiasmatic nuclei (SCN) and the pineal gland. The fossilized skulls of many extinct vertebrates have a pineal foramen (opening), which in some cases

990-466: A description of the brain, was written by Mondino de Luzzi . In 1402, St Mary of Bethlehem Hospital (later known as Bedlam in Britain) was the first hospital used exclusively for the mentally ill. In 1504, Leonardo da Vinci continued his study of the human body with a wax cast of the human ventricle system. In 1536, Nicolo Massa described the effects of different diseases, such as syphilis on

1089-558: A fairly stable set of consonantal contrasts . The main phonological changes occurred during the Hellenistic and Roman period (see Koine Greek phonology for details): In all its stages, the morphology of Greek shows an extensive set of productive derivational affixes , a limited but productive system of compounding and a rich inflectional system. Although its morphological categories have been fairly stable over time, morphological changes are present throughout, particularly in

SECTION 10

#1732773013192

1188-508: A faster, more convenient cursive writing style with the use of ink and quill . The Greek alphabet consists of 24 letters, each with an uppercase ( majuscule ) and lowercase ( minuscule ) form. The letter sigma has an additional lowercase form (ς) used in the final position of a word: In addition to the letters, the Greek alphabet features a number of diacritical signs : three different accent marks ( acute , grave , and circumflex ), originally denoting different shapes of pitch accent on

1287-540: A foreign language. It is also often stated that the historical changes have been relatively slight compared with some other languages. According to one estimation, " Homeric Greek is probably closer to Demotic than 12-century Middle English is to modern spoken English ". Greek is spoken today by at least 13 million people, principally in Greece and Cyprus along with a sizable Greek-speaking minority in Albania near

1386-427: A groove where the two halves of the thalamus join. It is one of the neuroendocrine secretory circumventricular organs in which capillaries are mostly permeable to solutes in the blood. The pineal gland is present in almost all vertebrates, but is absent in protochordates in which there is a simple pineal homologue. The hagfish , considered as a primitive vertebrate, has a rudimentary structure regarded as

1485-472: A hormone from the pineal gland might be useful in treating skin diseases, isolated it and named it melatonin in 1958. The substance did not prove to be helpful as intended, but its discovery helped solve several mysteries, such as why removing a rat's pineal gland accelerated its ovary growth, why keeping rats in constant light decreased the weight of their pineals, and why pinealectomy and constant light affect ovary growth to an equal extent; this knowledge gave

1584-429: A larger organ. Epiphysan – an extract derived from the pineal glands of cattle – was historically used by veterinarians for rut suppression in mares and cows. In the 1930s it was tested on humans, and resulted in a temporary reduction in their masturbation impulse. In 1917, it was known that extract of cow pineals lightened frog skin. Dermatology professor Aaron B. Lerner and colleagues at Yale University , hoping that

1683-452: A pineal organ, but some frogs and toads also have what is called a "frontal organ", which is essentially a parietal eye. Pinealocytes in many non-mammalian vertebrates have a strong resemblance to the photoreceptor cells of the eye . Evidence from morphology and developmental biology suggests that pineal cells possess a common evolutionary ancestor with retinal cells. Pineal cytostructure seems to have evolutionary similarities to

1782-426: A postmenopausal osteoporosis mouse model. Calcification of the pineal gland is typical in young adults, and has been observed in children as young as two years of age. The internal secretions of the pineal gland are known to inhibit the development of the reproductive glands because when it is severely damaged in children, development of the sexual organs and the skeleton are accelerated. Pineal gland calcification

1881-441: A recognizable pineal gland. Protochordates in general do not have the distinct structure as an organ, but they have a mass of photoreceptor cells called lamellar body , which is regarded as a pineal homologue. The results of various scientific research in evolutionary biology, comparative neuroanatomy and neurophysiology have explained the evolutionary history ( phylogeny ) of the pineal gland in different vertebrate species. From

1980-591: A single pineal gland in developing embryos of turtles, snakes, birds, and mammals. The pineal organs of mammals fall into one of three categories based on shape. Rodents have more structurally complex pineal glands than other mammals. Crocodilians and some tropical lineages of mammals (some xenarthrans ( sloths ), pangolins , sirenians ( manatees and dugongs ), and some marsupials ( sugar gliders )) have lost both their parietal eye and their pineal organ. Polar mammals, such as walruses and some seals, possess unusually large pineal glands. All amphibians have

2079-492: A worm-like structure in the cerebellum (later called vermiform epiphysis, known today as the vermis cerebelli or cerebellar vermis ). From his study on the blood vessels surrounding the pineal gland he discovered the great vein of the cerebellum, later called the vein of Galen . He could not establish any functional role of the pineal gland and regarded it as a structural support for the cerebral veins. Seventeenth-century philosopher and scientist René Descartes discussed

SECTION 20

#1732773013192

2178-430: Is a primitive vertebrate, the hagfish . Even in the hagfish, however, there may be a "pineal equivalent" structure in the dorsal diencephalon . A few more complex vertebrates have lost pineal glands over the course of their evolution. The lamprey (another primitive vertebrate), however, does possess one. The lancelet Branchiostoma lanceolatum , an early chordate which is a close relative to vertebrates, also lacks

2277-804: Is also found in Bulgaria near the Greek-Bulgarian border. Greek is also spoken worldwide by the sizable Greek diaspora which has notable communities in the United States , Australia , Canada , South Africa , Chile , Brazil , Argentina , Russia , Ukraine , the United Kingdom , and throughout the European Union , especially in Germany . Historically, significant Greek-speaking communities and regions were found throughout

2376-479: Is an Indo-European language, but also includes a number of borrowings from the languages of the populations that inhabited Greece before the arrival of Proto-Greeks, some documented in Mycenaean texts ; they include a large number of Greek toponyms . The form and meaning of many words have changed. Loanwords (words of foreign origin) have entered the language, mainly from Latin, Venetian , and Turkish . During

2475-497: Is associated with corpora arenacea , also known as "brain sand". Tumors of the pineal gland are called pinealomas . These tumors are rare and 50% to 70% are germinomas that arise from sequestered embryonic germ cells . Histologically they are similar to testicular seminomas and ovarian dysgerminomas . A pineal tumor can compress the superior colliculi and pretectal area of the dorsal midbrain , producing Parinaud's syndrome . Pineal tumors also can cause compression of

2574-404: Is detrimental to its ability to synthesize melatonin and scientific literature presents inconclusive findings on whether it causes sleep problems. The calcified gland is often seen in skull X-rays . Calcification rates vary widely by country and correlate with an increase in age, with calcification occurring in an estimated 40% of Americans by age seventeen. Calcification of the pineal gland

2673-563: Is larger than that of any living vertebrate. Although fossils seldom preserve deep-brain soft anatomy, the brain of the Russian fossil bird Cerebavis cenomanica from Melovatka, about 90 million years old, shows a relatively large parietal eye and pineal gland. The secretory activity of the pineal gland is only partially understood. Its location deep in the brain suggested to philosophers throughout history that it possessed particular importance. This combination led to its being regarded as

2772-415: Is matched only by the now-extinct Anatolian languages . The Greek language is conventionally divided into the following periods: In the modern era, the Greek language entered a state of diglossia : the coexistence of vernacular and archaizing written forms of the language. What came to be known as the Greek language question was a polarization between two competing varieties of Modern Greek: Dimotiki ,

2871-408: Is prolonged, averaging up to several years. The position of these tumors makes them difficult to remove surgically. The morphology of the pineal gland differs markedly in different pathological conditions. For instance, it is known that its volume is reduced in both obese patients and those with primary insomnia . Nearly all vertebrate species possess a pineal gland. The most important exception

2970-519: Is protected and promoted officially as a regional and minority language in Armenia, Hungary , Romania, and Ukraine. It is recognized as a minority language and protected in Turkey by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne . The phonology , morphology , syntax , and vocabulary of the language show both conservative and innovative tendencies across the entire attestation of the language from the ancient to

3069-404: Is reddish-gray in colour and about the size of a grain of rice (5–8 mm) in humans. It forms part of the epithalamus . It is attached to the rest of the brain by a pineal stalk. The ventral lamina of the pineal stalk is continuous with the posterior commissure , and its dorsal lamina with the habenular commissure . It normally lies in a depression between the two superior colliculi . It

Neurophysiology - Misplaced Pages Continue

3168-416: Is reduced. In the zebrafish the pineal gland does not straddle the midline, but shows a left-sided bias. In humans , functional cerebral dominance is accompanied by subtle anatomical asymmetry. One function of the pineal gland is to produce melatonin . Melatonin has various functions in the central nervous system , the most important of which is to help modulate sleep patterns. Melatonin production

3267-415: Is situated between the laterally positioned thalamic bodies , and posterior to the habenular commissure . It is located in the quadrigeminal cistern . It is located posterior to the third ventricle and encloses the small, cerebrospinal fluid -filled pineal recess of the third ventricle which projects into the stalk of the gland. Unlike most of the mammalian brain, the pineal gland is not isolated from

3366-840: Is sometimes called aljamiado , as when Romance languages are written in the Arabic alphabet. Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Greek: Transcription of the example text into Latin alphabet : Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in English: Proto-Greek Mycenaean Ancient Koine Medieval Modern Pineal gland The pineal gland (also known as

3465-763: Is still used internationally for the writing of Ancient Greek . In Greek, the question mark is written as the English semicolon, while the functions of the colon and semicolon are performed by a raised point (•), known as the ano teleia ( άνω τελεία ). In Greek the comma also functions as a silent letter in a handful of Greek words, principally distinguishing ό,τι ( ó,ti , 'whatever') from ότι ( óti , 'that'). Ancient Greek texts often used scriptio continua ('continuous writing'), which means that ancient authors and scribes would write word after word with no spaces or punctuation between words to differentiate or mark boundaries. Boustrophedon , or bi-directional text,

3564-480: Is stimulated by darkness and inhibited by light. Light sensitive nerve cells in the retina detect light and send this signal to the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN), synchronizing the SCN to the day-night cycle. Nerve fibers then relay the daylight information from the SCN to the paraventricular nuclei (PVN), then to the spinal cord and via the sympathetic system to superior cervical ganglia (SCG), and from there into

3663-522: The Principia Discordia , which claims it can be used to contact the goddess of discord Eris . In the short story " From Beyond " by H. P. Lovecraft , a scientist creates an electronic device that emits a resonance wave, which stimulates an affected person's pineal gland, thereby allowing them to perceive planes of existence outside the scope of accepted reality , a translucent, alien environment that overlaps our own recognized reality. It

3762-674: The Balkans , Caucasus , the Black Sea coast, Asia Minor , and the Eastern Mediterranean . It has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning at least 3,400 years of written records. Its writing system is the Greek alphabet , which has been used for approximately 2,800 years; previously, Greek was recorded in writing systems such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary . The alphabet arose from

3861-624: The Byzantine Empire and developed into Medieval Greek . In its modern form , Greek is the official language of Greece and Cyprus and one of the 24 official languages of the European Union . It is spoken by at least 13.5 million people today in Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Albania, Turkey , and the many other countries of the Greek diaspora . Greek roots have been widely used for centuries and continue to be widely used to coin new words in other languages; Greek and Latin are

3960-627: The Christian Bible was also originally written in Greek. Together with the Latin texts and traditions of the Roman world , the Greek texts and Greek societies of antiquity constitute the objects of study of the discipline of Classics . During antiquity , Greek was by far the most widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world . It eventually became the official language of

4059-495: The Eastern Mediterranean , in what are today Southern Italy , Turkey , Cyprus , Syria , Lebanon , Israel , Palestine , Egypt , and Libya ; in the area of the Black Sea , in what are today Turkey, Bulgaria , Romania , Ukraine , Russia , Georgia , Armenia , and Azerbaijan ; and, to a lesser extent, in the Western Mediterranean in and around colonies such as Massalia , Monoikos , and Mainake . It

Neurophysiology - Misplaced Pages Continue

4158-481: The Edwin Smith surgical papyrus was written. This papyrus was crucial in understanding how the ancient Egyptians understood the nervous system . This papyrus looked at different case studies about injuries to different parts of the body, most notably the head . Beginning around 460 B.C., Hippocrates began to study epilepsy , and theorized that it had its origins in the brain. Hippocrates also theorized that

4257-516: The Indo-Iranian languages (see Graeco-Aryan ), but little definitive evidence has been found. In addition, Albanian has also been considered somewhat related to Greek and Armenian, and it has been proposed that they all form a higher-order subgroup along with other extinct languages of the ancient Balkans; this higher-order subgroup is usually termed Palaeo-Balkan , and Greek has a central position in it. Linear B , attested as early as

4356-602: The Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin , Cyrillic , Coptic , Gothic , and many other writing systems. The Greek language holds a very important place in the history of the Western world. Beginning with the epics of Homer , ancient Greek literature includes many works of lasting importance in the European canon . Greek is also the language in which many of the foundational texts in science and philosophy were originally composed. The New Testament of

4455-431: The cerebellum could affect motor movements. In 1776, Vincenzo Malacarne  [ it ] studied the cerebellum intensely, and published a book solely based on its function and appearance. In 1784, Félix Vicq-d'Azyr , discovered a black colored structure in the midbrain . In 1791 Samuel Thomas von Sömmerring alluded to this structure, calling it the substantia nigra . In the same year, Luigi Galvani described

4554-512: The cerebral aqueduct , resulting in a noncommunicating hydrocephalus . Other manifestations are the consequence of their pressure effects and consist of visual disturbances, headache , mental deterioration, and sometimes dementia-like behaviour. These neoplasms are divided into three categories: pineoblastomas, pineocytomas , and mixed tumors, based on their level of differentiation, which, in turn, correlates with their neoplastic aggressiveness. The clinical course of patients with pineocytomas

4653-422: The lateral cerebral ventricle , causes a calcium -mediated increase in pineal glucose metabolism . Studies in mice suggest that the pineal-derived melatonin regulates new bone deposition. Pineal-derived melatonin mediates its action on the bone cells through MT2 receptors. This pathway could be a potential new target for osteoporosis treatment as the study shows the curative effect of oral melatonin treatment in

4752-492: The nominal and verbal systems. The major change in the nominal morphology since the classical stage was the disuse of the dative case (its functions being largely taken over by the genitive ). The verbal system has lost the infinitive , the synthetically -formed future, and perfect tenses and the optative mood . Many have been replaced by periphrastic ( analytical ) forms. Pronouns show distinctions in person (1st, 2nd, and 3rd), number (singular, dual , and plural in

4851-428: The pineal body or epiphysis cerebri ) is a small endocrine gland in the brain of most vertebrates . It produces melatonin , a serotonin -derived hormone , which modulates sleep patterns following the diurnal cycles . The shape of the gland resembles a pine cone , which gives it its name. The pineal gland is located in the epithalamus , near the center of the brain, between the two hemispheres , tucked in

4950-472: The pineal gland . He mistakenly believed that it was the "soul" of the brain, and believed it was where thoughts formed. In 1658, Johann Jakob Wepfer studied a patient in which he believed that a broken blood vessel had caused apoplexy , or a stroke . In 1749, David Hartley published Observations on Man , which focused on frame (neurology), duty ( moral psychology ) and expectations ( spirituality ) and how these integrated within one another. This text

5049-474: The trigeminal ganglion that are involved in pituitary adenylate cyclase-activating peptide neuropeptide signaling project the gland. The canonical neural pathway regulating pineal melatonin production begins in the eye with the intrinsically photosensitive ganglion cells of the retina which project inhibitory GABAergic efferents to the paraventricular nucleus of hypothalamus via the retinohypothalamic tract . The paraventricular nucleus in turn projects to

SECTION 50

#1732773013192

5148-403: The "frontal organ" (German stirnorgan ). In 1918, Swedish zoologist Nils Holmgren described the "parietal eye" in frogs and dogfish. He discovered that the parietal eyes were made up of sensory cells similar to the cone cells of the retina, and suggested that it was a primitive light-sensor organ ( photoreceptor ). The pineal gland was originally believed to be a " vestigial remnant" of

5247-416: The "pineal equivalent" in the dorsal diencephalon . In some species of amphibians and reptiles, the gland is linked to a light-sensing organ, variously called the parietal eye , the pineal eye or the third eye . Reconstruction of the biological evolution pattern suggests that the pineal gland was originally a kind of atrophied photoreceptor that developed into a neuroendocrine organ. Ancient Greeks were

5346-486: The Greek alphabet since approximately the 9th century BC. It was created by modifying the Phoenician alphabet , with the innovation of adopting certain letters to represent the vowels. The variant of the alphabet in use today is essentially the late Ionic variant, introduced for writing classical Attic in 403 BC. In classical Greek, as in classical Latin, only upper-case letters existed. The lower-case Greek letters were developed much later by medieval scribes to permit

5445-495: The Greek language was the Cypriot syllabary (also a descendant of Linear A via the intermediate Cypro-Minoan syllabary ), which is closely related to Linear B but uses somewhat different syllabic conventions to represent phoneme sequences. The Cypriot syllabary is attested in Cyprus from the 11th century BC until its gradual abandonment in the late Classical period, in favor of the standard Greek alphabet. Greek has been written in

5544-629: The Greek verb have likewise remained largely the same over the course of the language's history but with significant changes in the number of distinctions within each category and their morphological expression. Greek verbs have synthetic inflectional forms for: Many aspects of the syntax of Greek have remained constant: verbs agree with their subject only, the use of the surviving cases is largely intact (nominative for subjects and predicates, accusative for objects of most verbs and many prepositions, genitive for possessors), articles precede nouns, adpositions are largely prepositional, relative clauses follow

5643-685: The Greek-Albanian border. A significant percentage of Albania's population has knowledge of the Greek language due in part to the Albanian wave of immigration to Greece in the 1980s and '90s and the Greek community in the country. Prior to the Greco-Turkish War and the resulting population exchange in 1923 a very large population of Greek-speakers also existed in Turkey , though very few remain today. A small Greek-speaking community

5742-697: The Soul, have this Glandula or Kernel large and fair enough." Walter Baldwin Spencer at the University of Oxford gave the first description of the pineal gland in lizards. In 1886, he described an eye-like structure, which he called the pineal eye or parietal eye, that was associated with the parietal foramen and the pineal stalk. The presence of a pineal body was already discovered by German zoologist Franz Leydig in 1872, in European lizards. Leydig called them

5841-404: The acute during the late 20th century, and it has only been retained in typography . After the writing reform of 1982, most diacritics are no longer used. Since then, Greek has been written mostly in the simplified monotonic orthography (or monotonic system), which employs only the acute accent and the diaeresis. The traditional system, now called the polytonic orthography (or polytonic system),

5940-595: The ancient Greeks believed that the structure maintained the movement of vital spirits from the middle (now identified as the third ) ventricle to the one in the parencephalis ( fourth ventricle ). Galen described the pineal gland in De usu partium corporis humani, libri VII ( On the Usefulness of Parts of the Body, Part 8 ) and De anatomicis administrationibus , libri IX ( On Anatomical Procedures, Part 9 ). He introduced

6039-402: The ancient language; singular and plural alone in later stages), and gender (masculine, feminine, and neuter), and decline for case (from six cases in the earliest forms attested to four in the modern language). Nouns, articles, and adjectives show all the distinctions except for a person. Both attributive and predicative adjectives agree with the noun. The inflectional categories of

SECTION 60

#1732773013192

6138-491: The arrangement in modern lampreys . In many lower vertebrates (such as species of fish, amphibians and lizards), the pineal gland is associated with parietal or pineal eye . In these animals, the parietal eye acts as a photoreceptor, and hence are also known as the third eye, and they can be seen on top of the head in some species. Some extinct Devonian fishes have two parietal foramina in their skulls, suggesting an ancestral bilaterality of parietal eyes. The parietal eye and

6237-473: The body by the blood–brain barrier system; it has profuse blood flow, second only to the kidney , supplied from the choroidal branches of the posterior cerebral artery . The afferent nerve supply of pineal gland is by the nervus conarii which receives postganglionic sympathetic afferents from the superior cervical ganglion , and parasympathetic afferents from the pterygopalatine ganglia and otic ganglia . According to research on animals, neurons of

6336-414: The brain was involved in sensation, and that it was where intelligence was derived from. Hippocrates, as well as most ancient Greeks , believed that relaxation and a stress free environment was crucial in helping treat neurological disorders . In 280 B.C., Erasistratus of Chios theorized that there were divisions in vestibular processing in the brain, as well as deducing from observation that sensation

6435-479: The cerebellum's role in equilibration to complete the Bell–Magendie law . In 1838, Theodor Schwann began studying white and grey matter in the brain, and discovered the myelin sheath . These cells, which cover the axons of the neurons in the brain, are named Schwann cells after him. In 1843 Carlo Matteucci and Emil du Bois-Reymond demonstrated that nerves transmit signals electrically. In 1848, Phineas Gage ,

6534-469: The classical neurophysiology patient, had his brain pierced by an iron tamping rod in a blasting accident. He became an excellent case study in the connection between the prefrontal cortex and behavior, decision making and consequences. In 1849, Hermann von Helmholtz studied the speed of frog nerve impulses while studying electricity in the body. While these are not all the developments in neurophysiology before 1849, these developments were significant to

6633-414: The concentration of FSH and LH within the gland. Administration of melatonin did not return the concentrations of FSH to normal levels, suggesting that the pineal gland influences pituitary gland secretion of FSH and LH through an undescribed transmitting molecule. The pineal gland contains receptors for the regulatory neuropeptide , endothelin-1 , which, when injected in picomolar quantities into

6732-417: The first to notice the pineal gland and believed it to be a valve, a guardian for the flow of pneuma . Galen in the 2nd century C.E. could not find any functional role and regarded the gland as a structural support for the brain tissue. He gave the name konario, meaning cone or pinecone, which during Renaissance was translated to Latin as pinealis. The 17th century philosopher René Descartes regarded

6831-438: The function was, and was able to draw the corpus striatum which is made up of the basal ganglia and the internal capsule. In 1549, Jason Pratensis published De Cerebri Morbis . This book was devoted to neurological diseases, and discussed symptoms, as well as ideas from Galen and other Greek, Roman and Arabic authors. It also looked into the anatomy and specific functions of different areas. In 1550, Andreas Vesalius worked on

6930-416: The gland as having a mystical purpose, describing it as the "principal seat of the soul". In the mid-20th century, the biological role as a neuroendocrine organ was established. The word pineal , from Latin pinea ( pine-cone ) in reference to the gland's similar shape, was first used in the late 17th century. The pineal gland is a pine cone-shaped (hence the name), unpaired midline brain structure. It

7029-439: The infinitive entirely (employing a raft of new periphrastic constructions instead) and uses participles more restrictively. The loss of the dative led to a rise of prepositional indirect objects (and the use of the genitive to directly mark these as well). Ancient Greek tended to be verb-final, but neutral word order in the modern language is VSO or SVO. Modern Greek inherits most of its vocabulary from Ancient Greek, which in turn

7128-467: The late 15th century BC, was the first script used to write Greek. It is basically a syllabary , which was finally deciphered by Michael Ventris and John Chadwick in the 1950s (its precursor, Linear A , has not been deciphered and most likely encodes a non-Greek language). The language of the Linear B texts, Mycenaean Greek , is the earliest known form of Greek. Another similar system used to write

7227-576: The membership of Greece and Cyprus in the European Union, Greek is one of the organization's 24 official languages . Greek is recognized as a minority language in Albania, and used co-officially in some of its municipalities, in the districts of Gjirokastër and Sarandë . It is also an official minority language in the regions of Apulia and Calabria in Italy. In the framework of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages , Greek

7326-441: The modern period. The division into conventional periods is, as with all such periodizations, relatively arbitrary, especially because, in all periods, Ancient Greek has enjoyed high prestige, and the literate borrowed heavily from it. Across its history, the syllabic structure of Greek has varied little: Greek shows a mixed syllable structure, permitting complex syllabic onsets but very restricted codas. It has only oral vowels and

7425-408: The name κωνάριο ( konario, often Latinised as conarium ) that means cone, as in pinecone, in De usu partium corporis humani. He correctly located the gland as directly lying behind the third ventricle. He argued against the prevailing concept of it as a valve for two basic reasons: it is located outside of the brain tissue and it does not move on its own. Galen instead identified the valve as

7524-432: The nervous system. He also noticed that the ventricular cavities were filled with cerebrospinal fluid . In 1542, the term physiology was used for the first time by a French physician named Jean Fernel , to explain bodily function in relation to the brain. In 1543, Andreas Vesalius wrote De humani corporis fabrica , which revolutionized the study of anatomy. In this book, he described the pineal gland and what he believed

7623-399: The noun they modify and relative pronouns are clause-initial. However, the morphological changes also have their counterparts in the syntax, and there are also significant differences between the syntax of the ancient and that of the modern form of the language . Ancient Greek made great use of participial constructions and of constructions involving the infinitive, and the modern variety lacks

7722-706: The older periods of Greek, loanwords into Greek acquired Greek inflections, thus leaving only a foreign root word. Modern borrowings (from the 20th century on), especially from French and English, are typically not inflected; other modern borrowings are derived from Albanian , South Slavic ( Macedonian / Bulgarian ) and Eastern Romance languages ( Aromanian and Megleno-Romanian ). Greek words have been widely borrowed into other languages, including English. Example words include: mathematics , physics , astronomy , democracy , philosophy , athletics , theatre, rhetoric , baptism , evangelist , etc. Moreover, Greek words and word elements continue to be productive as

7821-480: The pineal gland both in his first book, the Treatise of Man (written before 1637, but only published posthumously 1662/1664), and in his last book, The Passions of the Soul (1649) and he regarded it as "the principal seat of the soul and the place in which all our thoughts are formed". In the Treatise of Man , he described conceptual models of man, namely creatures created by God, which consist of two ingredients,

7920-438: The pineal gland of living tetrapods are probably the descendants of the left and right parts of this organ, respectively. During embryonic development, the parietal eye and the pineal organ of modern lizards and tuataras form together from a pocket formed in the brain ectoderm . The loss of parietal eyes in many living tetrapods is supported by developmental formation of a paired structure that subsequently fuses into

8019-465: The pineal gland. The compound pinoline is also claimed to be produced in the pineal gland; it is one of the beta-carbolines . This claim is subject to some controversy. Studies on rodents suggest that the pineal gland influences the pituitary gland 's secretion of the sex hormones, follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH), and luteinizing hormone (LH). Pinealectomy performed on rodents produced no change in pituitary weight, but caused an increase in

8118-415: The point of view of biological evolution, the pineal gland is a kind of atrophied photoreceptor . In the epithalamus of some species of amphibians and reptiles, it is linked to a light-sensing organ, known as the parietal eye , which is also called the pineal eye or third eye. It is likely that the common ancestor of all vertebrates had a pair of photosensory organs on the top of its head, similar to

8217-604: The predominant sources of international scientific vocabulary . Greek has been spoken in the Balkan peninsula since around the 3rd millennium BC, or possibly earlier. The earliest written evidence is a Linear B clay tablet found in Messenia that dates to between 1450 and 1350 BC, making Greek the world's oldest recorded living language . Among the Indo-European languages, its date of earliest written attestation

8316-427: The retinal cells of the lateral eyes. Modern birds and reptiles express the phototransducing pigment melanopsin in the pineal gland. Avian pineal glands are thought to act like the suprachiasmatic nucleus in mammals . The structure of the pineal eye in modern lizards and tuatara is analogous to the cornea, lens, and retina of the lateral eyes of vertebrates. In most vertebrates, exposure to light sets off

8415-410: The role of electricity in nerves of dissected frogs. In 1808, Franz Joseph Gall studied and published work on phrenology . Phrenology was the faulty science of looking at head shape to determine different aspects of personality and brain function. In 1811, Julien Jean César Legallois studied respiration in animal dissection and lesions and found the center of respiration in the medulla oblongata . In

8514-401: The same year, Charles Bell finished work on what would later become known as the Bell–Magendie law , which compared functional differences between dorsal and ventral roots of the spinal cord . In 1822, Karl Friedrich Burdach distinguished between the lateral and medial geniculate bodies, as well as named the cingulate gyrus . In 1824, F. Magendie studied and produced the first evidence of

8613-437: The stressed vowel; the so-called breathing marks ( rough and smooth breathing ), originally used to signal presence or absence of word-initial /h/; and the diaeresis , used to mark the full syllabic value of a vowel that would otherwise be read as part of a diphthong. These marks were introduced during the course of the Hellenistic period. Actual usage of the grave in handwriting saw a rapid decline in favor of uniform usage of

8712-518: The study of the brain and body. Greek language Greek ( Modern Greek : Ελληνικά , romanized :  Elliniká , [eliniˈka] ; Ancient Greek : Ἑλληνική , romanized :  Hellēnikḗ ) is an Indo-European language, constituting an independent Hellenic branch within the Indo-European language family. It is native to Greece , Cyprus , Italy (in Calabria and Salento ), southern Albania , and other regions of

8811-399: The superior cervical ganglia, which finally projects to the pineal gland. Darkness thus leads to disinhibition of the paraventricular nucleus, leading it to activate pineal gland melatonin production by way of the superior cervical ganglia. The pineal body in humans consists of a lobular parenchyma of pinealocytes surrounded by connective tissue spaces. The gland's surface is covered by

8910-447: The various stages of the Greek language are often emphasized. Although Greek has undergone morphological and phonological changes comparable to those seen in other languages, never since classical antiquity has its cultural, literary, and orthographic tradition been interrupted to the extent that one can speak of a new language emerging. Greek speakers today still tend to regard literary works of ancient Greek as part of their own rather than

9009-529: The vernacular form of Modern Greek proper, and Katharevousa , meaning 'purified', a compromise between Dimotiki and Ancient Greek developed in the early 19th century that was used for literary and official purposes in the newly formed Greek state. In 1976, Dimotiki was declared the official language of Greece, after having incorporated features of Katharevousa and thus giving birth to Standard Modern Greek , used today for all official purposes and in education . The historical unity and continuing identity between

9108-574: Was a distinct dialect of Greek itself. Aside from the Macedonian question, current consensus regards Phrygian as the closest relative of Greek, since they share a number of phonological, morphological and lexical isoglosses , with some being exclusive between them. Scholars have proposed a Graeco-Phrygian subgroup out of which Greek and Phrygian originated. Among living languages, some Indo-Europeanists suggest that Greek may be most closely related to Armenian (see Graeco-Armenian ) or

9207-600: Was also the first to use the English term psychology . In 1752, the Society of Friends created an asylum in Philadelphia , Pennsylvania. The asylum intended to give not only medical treatment to those mentally ill, but also provide with caretakers and comfortable living conditions. In 1755, Jean-Baptiste Le Roy began using electroconvulsive therapy for the mentally ill, a treatment still used today in specific cases. In 1760, Arne-Charles studied how different lesions in

9306-568: Was also used as the official language of government and religion in the Christian Nubian kingdoms , for most of their history. Greek, in its modern form, is the official language of Greece, where it is spoken by almost the entire population. It is also the official language of Cyprus (nominally alongside Turkish ) and the British Overseas Territory of Akrotiri and Dhekelia (alongside English ). Because of

9405-557: Was also used in Ancient Greek. Greek has occasionally been written in the Latin script , especially in areas under Venetian rule or by Greek Catholics . The term Frankolevantinika / Φραγκολεβαντίνικα applies when the Latin script is used to write Greek in the cultural ambit of Catholicism (because Frankos / Φράγκος is an older Greek term for West-European dating to when most of (Roman Catholic Christian) West Europe

9504-546: Was located there. In 177 Galen theorized that human thought occurred in the brain, as opposed to the heart as Aristotle had theorized. The optic chiasm , which is crucial to the visual system, was discovered around 100 C.E. by Marinus. c.  1000 , Al-Zahrawi , living in Iberia , began to write about different surgical treatments for neurological disorders. In 1216, the first anatomy textbook in Europe, which included

9603-532: Was the only unpaired component of the brain. The Latin name pinealis became popular in the 17th century. For example, English physician Thomas Willis described a glandula pinealis in his book, Cerebri anatome cui accessit nervorum descriptio et usus (1664) . Willis criticised Descartes's concept, remarking: "we can scarce[ly] believe this to be the seat of the Soul, or its chief Faculties to arise from it; because Animals, which seem to be almost quite destitute of Imagination, Memory, and other superior Powers of

9702-580: Was under the control of the Frankish Empire ). Frankochiotika / Φραγκοχιώτικα (meaning 'Catholic Chiot') alludes to the significant presence of Catholic missionaries based on the island of Chios . Additionally, the term Greeklish is often used when the Greek language is written in a Latin script in online communications. The Latin script is nowadays used by the Greek-speaking communities of Southern Italy . The Yevanic dialect

9801-673: Was written by Romaniote and Constantinopolitan Karaite Jews using the Hebrew Alphabet . In a tradition, that in modern time, has come to be known as Greek Aljamiado , some Greek Muslims from Crete wrote their Cretan Greek in the Arabic alphabet . The same happened among Epirote Muslims in Ioannina . This also happened among Arabic-speaking Byzantine rite Christians in the Levant ( Lebanon , Palestine, and Syria ). This usage

#191808