He recognized hemispheric functional differences, but instead of considering them as innate and structural, he believed they were attributable to educational failures. “We find,” Brown-Séquard (1874b, 10) declared, “that it is owing to that defect in our education that one-half of our brain is developed for certain things, while the other half of the brain is developed for other things.” So the issue was clear-cut: “If we have two brains, why not educate both of them?” (1). Indeed, “if children were thus trained, we would have a sturdier race, both mentally and physically” (Brown-Séquard 1874a, 333). Training the brain would not only improve its efficacy but also increase its size, since “every organ which is put into use for a certain function becomes developed” (Brown-Séquard 1874b, 15–16).
Inspired by the homonymous book by Fernando Vidal and Francisco Ortega, this timespace presents the authors' genealogy of the cerebral subject and the influence of the neurological discourse in human sciences, mental health and culture.