“The Sleeping Beauty of the Brain”: Memory, MIT, Montreal, and the Origins of Neuroscience

This essay traces the simultaneous development of two distinct efforts to unify brain sciences in twentieth century—one originating at Montreal Neurological Institute (MNI) and other Massachusetts Technology (MIT). Both coalesced around investigations memory but displayed profoundly different disciplinary styles. At MNI, loss surgical patients crystallized a form research that eventually became paradigm interdisciplinarity for International Brain Research Organization (IBRO). MIT, meanwhile, biophysicist Francis Schmitt aimed transcend mind by discovering “memory molecule” akin DNA—this basis his Neurosciences Program (NRP). While both organizations failed achieve unification they desired, IBRO NRP did social 1960s. established much capital Society Neuroscience, promoted possibilities new transdisciplinary “neuroscience.” Beyond reframing history modern neuroscience, story MNI/IBRO, NRP, problem can help us examine contrasting approaches “interdisciplinarity” twentieth-century science.