Cécile and Oskar Vogt: TheVisionaries of ModernNeuroscience by Igor Klatzo (with Gabriele Zu Rhein)Springer Verlag: 2002. 130 pp. E76

Edward G. Jones

They met in 1897. Cécile Mugnier was a tall,broad savoyarde, slow-speaking but wittynonetheless. Against the wishes of her familyshe had come to Paris to study medicine. Atthe age of 23, while assistant to the neurol-ogist Pierre Marie, she met Oskar Vogt, ashort, dapper north German with a strongstreak of contentiousness. He had learnedneuroanatomy under Paul Flechsig atLeipzig, psychiatry with Otto Binswanger at Jena and hypnotism with August Forel at Zürich. He was already an accomplishedexponent of the use of hypnosis in the treatment of neurosis and anxiety, and hadcome to Paris to study human brain anatomyunder Jules Dejerine. Cécile and Oskar mar-ried in Berlin in 1899, and there commenceda 60-year scientific partnership known toposterity simply as ‘the Vogts’.

On moving to Berlin, accompanied by 30 human brains donated by Marie, theyestablished a private neurobiological centre, perhaps the first of its kind, and probably the first use of the term ‘neurobiology’.Against institutional resistance, and onlyafter the intervention of the armamentsmanufacturer F. A. Krupp, whom Oskar Vogthad befriended some years earlier, the centrewas incorporated into Berlin University. In1914 it became the Kaiser Wilhelm Institutfür Hirnforschung, which in 1931 moved to extensive premises in the Berlin suburb of Buch.

The philosophy of the institute wasdirected towards the localization of ‘psychic’functions in the brain through the use ofrefined anatomical methods. But there wasalso an abiding interest in extending thesestudies to reveal the basis for the superiorcapacities of artists, scientists, statesmen and others with ‘élite’ brains. Cécile seems to have had the better eye for neuroanatomy,whereas Oskar possessed the ability to transform observations drawn from anatom-ical studies, from the results of electricalstimulation in animals and from humanneuropathology, into principles of brainorganization and function.

Through the doors of the institute passedmany who were to become leaders in theirfields throughout the German-speakinglands, Poland and Russia. From its begin-ning, the institute was divided into sectionsdevoted to anatomy, histology, brain stimu-

lation, physiology, genetics, clinical research,psychology and chemistry, each headed byan individual scientist. The most distin-guished of these were to be the chief assistantKorbinian Brodmann, the histologist MaxBielschowsky, and the Vogts’ elder daughterand neurochemist, Marthé. The work of visiting scientists, including M. Friedemann,Max Lewandowsky, Theodor Mauss, RolfHassler, the two Roses, Maximilian andJerzy, from Poland, and J. L. Pines, and collaborations with other German scientistssuch as Alois Alzheimer, conferred evengreater stature on the institute. There, thescience of cyto- and myeloarchitectonics was born at the hands of Brodmann and theVogts. Cécile Vogt defined the subcorticalconnections of the thalamus and basal ganglia and the pathology of the striatum,Bielschowsky discovered his silver stain, andHassler described the loss of neurons fromthe substantia nigra that is the hallmark of Parkinson’s disease.

As an old-style social democrat who hadenjoyed strong associations with Soviet sci-entists and physicians, Oskar Vogt was notpopular with the Nazi régime. For a time, his friendship with the Krupp family gavehim protection, and his pugnacity in the face of ever-mounting pressure from the localauthorities protected the institute and hisplace in it. Eventually, however, in 1936 he was eased out of the directorship, as much by age as by political considerations.

With the help of the Krupps, a new institute housing some of the invaluable collection ofhuman brains from Berlin was established at Neustadt in the Black Forest, and there the Vogts saw out the Second World War inrelative peace.

The house journal, Journal für Psycholo-gie und Neurologie, which had carried mostof the major neuroanatomical papers of awhole era, saw its final issue come out there,containing the last significant paper by theVogts, on the connections of the human thalamus and basal ganglia. Oskar devotedhimself largely to speculations about howgenetic and evolutionary alterations in cytoarchitectonic units in cortical regionsmight confer vulnerability to stroke andother pathological insults. The institutestumbled on for a decade or so after Oskar’sdeath in 1959 and Cécile’s departure to joinMarthé in Cambridge, but it was eventuallywound down. The Berlin and Neustadtbrain archives had by now been reunited and were transferred to Düsseldorf, wherethey have proved a useful resource for modern investigators.

Since the war, the Vogts have sufferedfrom a perennially bad press. Their commit-ment to breaking up the 50 or so areasdefined by Brodmann in the human cerebralcortex into finer and finer subdivisions(eventually reaching more than 200) did notsit well with the prevailing mood of modernneuroscience. Oskar’s propensity for seeing

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Two mindsThe Vogts sought to tie ‘psychic’ functions to specific regions of the brain.

Inseparable: Cécile (right) and Oskar Vogt were married in 1899 and worked together for 60 years.

© 2003 Nature Publishing Group

cellular evidence of ‘éliteness’ in the brains of accomplished individuals did not help.

After Lenin’s death in 1924, Oskar wascalled to Moscow to help set up the MoscowBrain Research Institute, which was to bedevoted to the study of Lenin’s brain. Lenin’sbrain does not seem to have been preservedvery well and this, along with recognitionthat it was remarkably atrophic and possiblyeven syphilitic, precluded significant inves-tigation. A few blocks from the parietal cortex, however, found their way into Vogt’shands and to Berlin. On examining sectionsfrom them, and apparently noticing anunusual number of large pyramidal cells inthe superficial layers of this cortex, Vogtdeclared Lenin an Associationsathlete, with apronounced ability to form connections inthe brain. This may have reflected consider-able percipience in recognizing, long beforethe conclusive demonstration in the late1970s, that the large layer III pyramids arethe origins of long-range corticocorticalconnections, or it may have been little morethan a tongue-in-cheek concession to theSoviet authorities who had paid Oskarhandsomely. But it did nothing to help theVogts’ reputation.

In the early 1990s, the Vogts suffered fur-ther ignominy in Tilman Spengler’s Lenin’sBrain (translated by Shaun Whiteside;Hamish Hamilton, 1993), an irreverent, andat times viciously funny, fictional send-up of the German neurological establishmentduring the Wilhelmine, Weimar and earlyNazi periods. The revelation recently that some of the brains of schizophrenics in the Vogts’ collection may have come frominmates of the concentration camps has cast a further pall.

Igor Klatzo, who spent three years work-ing with the ageing Vogts at Neustadt-Schwartzwald in 1946–48, has written a personal tribute to his mentors in which hehighlights those personal qualities that areunrevealed by documentation of their con-siderable scientific achievements. There is,unfortunately, not much discussion of thescientific contributions of the Berlin insti-tute, which still await definitive analysis.However, all of the data that Spengler had previously used so incisively in his novel are presented here. Oskar’s often fraughtrelations with Brodmann, and especiallywith Bielschowsky, are brought out as neverbefore, and Klatzo’s work will undoubtedlyserve as a rich source of other anecdotes for the neuroscience community. Its mostinteresting feature, however, is its account ofrural Germany getting back on its feet afterthe war, and of the camaraderie that theauthor and other young scientists experi-enced in the company of the Vogts and theirremaining staff during this period. ■

Edward G. Jones is at the Center for Neuroscience,University of California at Davis, Davis,California 95616, USA.

Going back to the rootFoundations of Tropical ForestBiology: Classic Papers withCommentariesedited by Robin L. Chazdon & T. C. WhitmoreUniversity of Chicago Press: 2002. 862 pp.$95, £66.50 (hbk) $35/£24.50 (pbk)

Roderick J. Zagt

This book is intended as a reminder to thosetropical biologists who, always looking up intheir efforts to advance knowledge, forget tolook down at the giants on whose shouldersthey stand. This anthology of classic paperson tropical-forest biology assembles a com-prehensive group of giants, including somethat one never realized one was standing on.

Robin Chazdon and the late Tim Whit-more have put together facsimile excerpts of 56 seminal papers that mark milestones in our understanding of tropical biology. It is too easy to fall into “sarcastic if not acrimonious criticism both of omission andof commission”, as the natural historianWilliam Beebe put it, quoted here in theintroduction. But it does seem that to be considered a foundation of tropical biologyit helps to have written in English, ratherthan French, Spanish or Japanese.

The papers are categorized in 12 sectionscovering general areas such as evolution,diversity, species composition and ecosys-tem ecology. This raises the question of whatconstitutes ‘tropical biology’. Are biologicalprocesses in the tropics fundamentally dif-ferent from those elsewhere, or is it simplythat the particular environment and historyof the tropics allows these processes to produce the broadest diversity, the strangestadaptations and the most coevolved inter-specific interactions? The great majority ofauthors represented in this volume seem tobe inspired by the wide diversity of tropicalforests and contribute, from one angle oranother, insights into the evolution andmaintenance of high species richness in the tropics. This focus on the outcome —amazing diversity — rather than on theunderlying biological processes per se,probably defines tropical biology. Andit helps to explain why this book givescomparatively little attention to subjects thatbiologists deal with, such as ecophysiologyor genetics , even in the tropics.

Each section starts with an introductoryreview by a recognized expert in the field,which puts the excerpted papers into thecontext of the past development of theconcept. The papers are then discussedfor their role in that development, and how the issues they raised haveserved to inspire and guide subsequent

research. Several of these introductions pro-vide excellent mini reviews of their topic.

The papers reprinted date from 1814 to1987, with a strong emphasis on the 1960sand 1970s, but the section introductionscover the most recent advances in knowl-edge. This mix makes the book something ofa hybrid between anthology and textbook.The anthology aims to highlight well-writtenhistorical papers that have made signifi-cant contributions to the development of knowledge. This is partly at odds with theduty of a textbook to be complete anddescribe the state of the art, when modernfindings may have added to or even over-taken older research. An anthology can limititself to the aims of entertainment and illustration. The editors could have beenbolder in dismissing influential but bone-dry technical papers, such as the study byRaven and Axelroth on biogeography andcontinental movements, in favour of papersthat add flavour to the scientific facts.

With the advantage of hindsight, the editors have selected historical papers thatproved to be milestones along a wide andstraight road towards increased understand-ing, rather than just some of the confusingsignposts that mark the narrow and windingroad to our current knowledge. Not everyinfluential paper has survived the test oftime. Similarly, the artificial cut-off dateinevitably dismisses more recent crucialadvances, even if they are more significant in the progress of knowledge than the onesreproduced. For example, it would be hardto find a researcher studying tree speciesdiversity in tropical forests who is not influ-enced by the work of Stephen Hubbell, butnone of his papers are included.

Most of these papers were written at atime when research in the tropics was hampered even more than it is today by poor accessibility and difficult working conditions. One is awestruck by the keenobservation, clear thinking and artful pendisplayed by many of the writers. Today,when many biologists seem to be more preoccupied with statistical than observa-tional power, it is refreshing and stimulatingto read the observations by Thomas Belt

in 1874 about the symbiosisbetween ants

and

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The katydidCopiphora exemplifies tropical-forest diversity.

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