Hermann Munk (3 February 1839 – 1 October 1912) was a
German
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* Germany (of or related to)
** Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
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**Ge ...
physiologist. He was born at
Posen, studied at
Berlin
Berlin ( , ) is the capital and List of cities in Germany by population, largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European Union by population within ci ...
and
Göttingen
Göttingen (, , ; nds, Chöttingen) is a university city in Lower Saxony, central Germany, the capital of the eponymous district. The River Leine runs through it. At the end of 2019, the population was 118,911.
General information
The ori ...
, and in 1862 became
docent
The title of docent is conferred by some European universities to denote a specific academic appointment within a set structure of academic ranks at or below the full professor rank, similar to a British readership, a French " ''maître de con ...
in the former university. Seven years afterward he was promoted to assistant professor, and in 1876 to
professor
Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professors ...
of
physiology
Physiology (; ) is the scientific study of functions and mechanisms in a living system. As a sub-discipline of biology, physiology focuses on how organisms, organ systems, individual organs, cells, and biomolecules carry out the chemical ...
at the veterinary college at Berlin. Besides studies on the productive methods of
threadworm
Threadworm may refer to:
* Pinworm (parasite)
* '' Strongyloides stercoralis''
* In non-human contexts, nematode
The nematodes ( or grc-gre, Νηματώδη; la, Nematoda) or roundworms constitute the phylum Nematoda (also called Nemathe ...
s, Munk wrote on the physiology of the
nerves and especially on the
brain
A brain is an organ that serves as the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate and most invertebrate animals. It is located in the head, usually close to the sensory organs for senses such as vision. It is the most complex organ in a ve ...
.
Visual cortex
Hermann Munk made important contributions to the field of psychology regarding the route from the eye to the brain through his meticulous research methods.
[The Human Brain and Spinal Cord: A Historical Study Illustrated by Writings from Antiquity to the Twentieth Century. By Edwin Clark and C.D. O’Malley copyright 1996 Norman Publishing] In 1878, he published findings from studies involving dogs and monkeys that led to the conclusion that vision was localized in the occipital cortical area. Amid scrutiny, he repeated his study and published similar findings in 1881. His focus was on dogs and he, unlike many others of his time, kept his subjects alive for an average of 5 years in order to study long-term effects.
[Origins of Neuroscience: A History of Explorations into Brain Function by Stanley Finger, Oxford University Press, 2001]
Throughout his research he discovered that cortical lesions in the visual areas lead to blindness. He called blindness experienced after the posterior portion of the occipital cortex was damaged Seelenblindheit, or psychic blindness. While suffering from psychic blindness, dogs were able to navigate effectively but showed no sign that they recognized what the objects in front of them were when they were only allowed to use sight. The dogs normally recovered from psychic blindness in 4 to 6 weeks and did appear to relearn faster than they first learned object meanings. The second type of blindness, Rindenblindheit, or cortical blindness, results from much larger lesions in the occipital cortex. Cortical blindness appears as a complete loss of vision and shows that vision involves areas surrounding the occipital cortex.
Selected bibliography
* ''Untersuchungen über das Wesen der Nervenerregung'' (1868)
* ''Ueber die Funktionen der Grosshirnrinde'' (1881; second edition, 1890)
* ''Ueber die Ausdehnung der Sinnessphären in der Grosshirnrinde'' (1901–1902)
* ''Ueber die Functionen des Kleinhirns'' (1906–1908)
* ''Zur Anatomie und Physiologie der Sehsphäre der Grosshirnrinde'' (1910)
* This article incorporates text from an article in the ''
New International Encyclopedia'' (first edition, 1902), now in public domain.
References
External links
*''Jewish Encyclopedia:'
"Munk, Hermann"by Isidore Singer & Frederick Haneman (1906).
German physiologists
1839 births
1912 deaths
German male writers
{{Germany-biologist-stub