History of Neuroscience

Milestones in Neuroscience Research

From http://www.neurosurvival.ca/ComputerAssistedLearning/History/chronology.html

Some of the best references for the events that document the history of the neurosciences are:

The following dates and events were gathered from several sources. These events are certainly not all of the important events to take place in neuroscience...just some of the ones that I have selected.

4000 B.C. to 0 A.D

ca. 4000 B.C. - Euphoriant effect of poppy plant reported in Sumerian records
ca. 2700 B.C. - Shen Nung originates acupuncture
ca. 1700 B.C. - Edwin Smith surgical papyrus written. First written record about the nervous system
ca. 500 B.C. - Alcmaion of Crotona dissects sensory nerves

Hippocrates

460-379 B.C. - Hippocrates discusses epilepsy as a disturbance of the brain
460-379 B.C. - Hippocrates states that the brain is involved with sensation and is the seat of intelligence
387 B.C. - Plato teaches at Athens. Believes brain is seat of mental process
335 B.C. - Aristotle writes on sleep; believes heart is seat of mental process
335-280 B.C. - Herophilus (the "Father of Anatomy"); believes ventricles are seat of human intelligence
280 B.C. - Erasistratus of Chios notes divisions of the brain

0 A.D. to 1500

77 - Galen lecture "On the Brain"
ca. 100 - Marinus describes the tenth cranial nerve
ca. 1000 - Alhazen compares the eye to a camera-like device
1316 - Mondino de'Luzzi writes the first European anatomy textbook (Anothomia)
1410 - Institution for the mentally ill established in Valencia, Spain

Leonardo da Vinci

1500 - 1600

1504 - Leonardo da Vinci produces wax cast of human ventricles
1536 - Nicolo Massa describes the cerebrospinal fluid 1543 - Andreas Vesalius publishes "On the Workings of the Human Body"

Andreas Vasalius

1543 - Andreas Vesalius discusses pineal gland and draws the corpus striatum
1552 - Bartolomeo Eustachio completes "Tabulae Anatomicae"
1561 - Gabriele Falloppio publishes "Observationes Anatomicae" and describes some of the cranial nerves
1562 - Bartolomeo Eustachio publishes "The Examination of the Organ of Hearing"
1564 - Aranzi coins term "hippocampus"
1573 - Constanzo Varolio names the pons
1573 - Constanzo Varolio is first to cut brain starting at its base
1583 - Felix Platter states that the lens only focuses light
1586 - A. Piccolomini distinguishes between cortex and white matter
1587 - Giulio Cesare Aranzi describes ventricles and hippocampus
1590 - Zacharias Janssen invents the compound microscope

1600 - 1700

1604 - Johannes Kepler describes inverted retinal image
1609 - J. Casserio publishes first description of mammillary bodies
1641 - Francis de la Boe Sylvius describes fissure on the lateral surface of the brain (Sylvian fissure)
1649 - Rene Descartes describes pineal as control center of body and mind
1658 - Johann Jakof Wepfer theorizes that a broken brain blood vessel may cause apoplexy (stroke)
1662 - Rene Descartes "De homine" is published (He died in 1650)
1664 - Thomas Willis publishes "Cerebri anatome" (in Latin)
1664 - Thomas Willis describes the eleventh cranial nerve
1664 - Gerardus Blasius discovers and names the "arachnoid."
1665 - Robert Hooke details his first microscope
1668 - l'Abbe Edme Mariotte discovers the blind spot
1670 - William Molins names the trochlear nerve
1673 - Joseph DuVerney uses experimental ablation technique in pigeons
1681 - English edition of Thomas Willis' "Cerebri anatome" was published
1684 - Raymond Vieussens publishes "Neurographia Universalis"
1684 - Raymond Vieussens uses boiling oil to harden the brain
1695 - Humphrey Ridley describes the restiform body
1695 - Humphrey Ridley publishes "The Anatomy of the Brain"

1700 - 1800

1704 - Antonio Valsalva publishes "On the Human Ear"
1705 - Antonio Pacchioni describes arachnoid granulations
1709 - Domenico Mistichelli describes pyramidal decussation
1717 - Antony van Leeuwenhoek describes nerve fiber in cross section
1736 - Jean Astruc coins the term reflex
1740 - Emanuel Swedenborg publishes "Oeconomia regni animalis"
1764 - D.F.A. Cotugno describes spinal subarachnoid cerebrospinal fluid
1772 - John Walsh conducts experiments on torpedo (electric) fish
1773 - John Fothergill describes trigeminal neuralgia (tic douloureux, Fothergill's syndrome)
1774 - Franz Anton Mesmer introduces "animal magnetism" (later called hypnosis)
1776 - Sir Joseph Priestley discovers nitrous oxide
1776 - M.V.G. Malacarne publishes first book solely devoted to the cerebellum
1777 - Philip Meckel proposes that the inner ear is filled with fluid, not air
1779 - Antonius Scarpa describes Scarpa's ganglion of the vestibular system
1781 - Felice Fontana describes the microscopic features of axoplasm from an axon
1782 - Francesco Gennari publishes work on "lineola albidior" (later known as the stripe of Gennari)
1786 - Felix Vicq d'Azyr discovers the locus coeruleus
1791 - Luigi Galvani publishes work on electrical stimulation of frog nerves
1794 - John Dalton describes color blindness
1796 - Johann Christian Reil describes the insula (island of Reil)

1800 - 1850

1800 - Alessandro Volta invents the wet cell battery
1800 - Humphrey Davy synthesizes nitrous oxide
1803 - Friedrich Serturner isolates morphine from opium
1805 - Felix Vicq d'Azyr discovers the red nucleus
1808 - Franz Joseph Gall publishes work on phrenology
1809 - Johann Christian Reil uses alcohol to harden the brain
1809 - Luigi Rolando uses galvanic current to stimulate cortex
1811 - Julien Jean Legallois discovers respiratory center in medulla
1811 - Charles Bell discusses functional differences between dorsal and ventral roots of the spinal cord
1813 - Felix Vicq d'Azyr discovers the claustrum
1817 - James Parkinson publishes "An Essay on the Shaking Palsy"
1818 - Library of the Surgeon General's Office established (later to become the Army Medical Library and then the National Library of Medicine)
1820 - Galvanometer invented
1821 - Charles Bell describes facial paralysis ipsilateral to facial nerve lesion (Bell's palsy)
1821 - Francois Magendie discusses functional differences between dorsal and ventral roots of the spinal cord
1822 - Friedrich Burdach names the cingular gyrus
1822 - Friedrich Burdach distinguishes lateral and medial geniculate
1823 - Marie-Jean-Pierre Flourens states that cerebellum regulates motor activity
1824 - John C. Caldwell publishes "Elements of Phrenology"
1824 - Marie-Jean-Pierre Flourens details ablation to study behavior
1824 - F. Magendie provides first evidence of cerebellum role in equilibration
1825 - John P. Harrison first argues against phrenology
1825 - Jean-Baptiste Bouillaud presents cases of loss of speech after frontal lesions
1825 - Robert B. Todd discusses the role of the cerebral cortex in mentation, corpus striatum in movement and midbrain in emotion
1825 - Luigi Rolando describes the sulcus that separates the precentral and postcentral gyri
1826 - Johannes Muller publishes theory of "specific nerve energies"
1827 - F. Magendie discovers foramen of Magendie
1832 - Chloral hydrate discovered
1836 - Marc Dax reads paper on left hemisphere damage effects on speech
1836 - Gabriel Gustav Valentin identifies neuron nucleus and nucleolus
1836 - Robert Remak describes myelinated and unmyelinated axons
1836 - Charles Dickens (the novelist) describes obstructive sleep apnea
1837 - Jan Purkyne (Purkinje) describes cerebellar cells; identifies neuron nucleus and processes
1838 - Robert Remak suggests that nerve fiber and nerve cell are joined
1839 - Theodor Schwann proposes the cell theory
1839 - C. Chevalier coins the term microtome
1839 - Francois Leuret names the Rolandic sulcus for Luigi Rolando
1840 - Adolph Hannover uses chromic acid to harden nervous tissue
1840 - J.G.F. Baillarger discusses the connections between white and gray matter of cerebral cortex
1842 - Benedikt Stilling is first to study spinal cord in serial sections
1842 - Crawford W. Long uses ether on man
1843 - James Braid coins term "hypnosis"
1844 - Robert Remak provides first illustration of 6-layered cortex
1846 - Carlo Matteucci invents the kymograph
1844 - Horace Wells uses nitrous oxide during a tooth extraction

Hermann von Helmholtz

1846 - William Morton demonstrates ether anesthesia at Mass. Gen. Hospital
1847 - Chloroform anesthesia used by James Young Simpson
1847 - American Medical Association is founded
1848 - Phineas Gage has his brain pierced by an iron rod
1849 - Hermann von Helmholtz measures the speed of frog nerve impulses

1850 - 1900

1850 - Augustus Waller describes appearance of degenerating nerve fibers
1850 - Marshall Hall coins term spinal shock
1850 - Emil Du Bois-Reymond invents nerve galvanometer
1851 - Heinrich Muller is first to describe the colored pigments in the retina
1851 - Marchese Alfonso Corti desribes the cochlear receptor organ in the inner ear (organ of Corti)
1851 - Hermann von Helmholtz invents ophthalmoscope
1852 - A. Kolliker describes how motor nerves originate from the neurons in the anterior horn of the spinal cord
1853 - William Benjamin Carpenter proposes "sensory ganglion" (thalamus) as seat of consciousness
1854 - Louis P. Gratiolet describes convolutions of the cerbral cortex
1855 - Bartolomeo Panizza shows the occipital lobe is essential for vision
1855 - Richard Heschl desrcibes the transverse gyri in the temporal lobe (Heschl's gyri)

Charles Darwin

1859 - Charles Darwin publishes The Origin of Species
1860 - Albert Niemann purifies cocaine
1860 - Gustav Theodor Fechner develops "Fechner's law"
1861 - Paul Broca discusses cortical localization
1861 - T.H. Huxley coins term "calcarine sulcus"
1862 - William Withey Gull describes clinical signs of syringomyelia
1863 - I.M. Sechenov publishes Reflexes of the Brain
1863 - Nikolaus Friedreich describes a progressive hereditary degenerative CNS disorder (Friedreich's ataxia)

John Hughlings Jackson

1864 - John Hughlings Jackson writes on loss of speech after brain injury
1865 - Otto Friedrich Karl Deiters differentiates dendrites and axons
1865 - Otto Friedrich Karl Deiters describes the lateral vestibular nucleus (Deiter's nucleus)
1866 - John Langdon Haydon Down publishes work on congenital "idiots"
1866 - Julius Bernstein hypothesized that a nerve impulse is a "wave of negativity"
1867 - Theodore Meynert performs histologic analysis of cerebral cortex
1868 - J. Bernstein measures the time course of the action potential
1869 - Francis Galton claims that intelligence is heredity (publication of Hereditary Genius)
1870 - Eduard Hitzig and Gustav Fritsch discover cortical motor area of dog using electrical stimulation
1870 - Ernst von Bergmann writes first textbook on nervous system surgery
1871 - Louis-Antoine Ranvier describes nerve fiber constriction
1872 - George Huntington describes symptoms of a hereditary chorea
1873 - Camillo Golgi publishes first work on the silver nitrate method
1874 - Vladimir Alekseyevich Betz publishes work on giant pyramidal cells
1874 - Roberts Bartholow electrically stimulates human cortical tissue
1874 - Carl Wernicke publishes "Der Aphasische Symptomencomplex" on aphasias
1875 - Sir David Ferrier describes different parts of monkey motor cortex
1875 - Richard Caton is first to record electrical activity from the brain
1875 - Wilhelm Heinrich Erb and Carl Friedrich Otto Westphal describe the knee jerk reflex
1876 - Franz Christian Boll discovers rhodopsin
1876 - Francis Galton uses the term "nature and nuture" to explain "heredity and environment"

Jean-Martin Charcot

1877 - Jean-Martin Charcot publishes "Lectures on the Diseases of the Nervous System"
1878 - W. Bevan Lewis publishes work on giant pyramidal cells of human precentral gyrus
1878 - Claude Bernard describes nerve/muscle blocking action of curare
1878 - Paul Broca publishes work on the "great limbic lobe"
1878 - W.R. Gowers publishes "Unilateral Gunshot Injury to the Spinal Cord"
1879 - Camillo Golgi describes the "musculo-tendineous organs" (later to be know as the "Golgi tendon organs"
1879 - William Crookes invents the cathode ray tube
1879 - Wilhelm Wundt sets up lab devoted to study human behavior
1880 - Jean Baptiste Edouard Gelineau introduces the word "narcolepsy"
1881 - Hermann Munk reports on visual abnormalities after occipital lobe ablation in dogs
1883 - Sir Victor Horsley describes effects of nitrous oxide anesthesia
1883 - Emil Kraepelin coins terms neuroses and psychoses
1884 - Karl Koller discovers anesthetic properties of cocaine
1884 - Georges Gilles de la Tourette describes several movement disorders
1885 - Paul Ehrlich notes that intravenous dye does not stain brain
1885 - Carl Weigert introduces hematoxylin to stain myelin
1885 - Ludwig Edinger describes nucleus that will be known as the Edinger-Westphal nucleus
1886 - V. Marchi publishes procedure to stain degenerating myelin
1886 - World's first Ph.D. in psychology given to Joseph Jastrow at Johns Hopkins University
1887 - Sergei Korsakoff describes symptoms characteristic in alcoholics
1887 - The National Institutes of Health established
1887 - Alfred Binet and C. Fere publish Animal Magnetism, a study on hypnosis
1888 - William W. Keen, Jr. is first American to remove intracranial meningioma
1888 - Hans Chiari introduces the term "syringomyelia"
1889 - Santiago Ramon y Cajal argues that nerve cells are independent elements
1889 - William His coins term dendrite
1889 - Sir Victor Horsley publishes somatotopic map of monkey motor cortex
1889 - Carlo Martinotti describes cortical neuron with ascending axon (this neuron now bears his name, Martinotti cell)
1889 - F.C. Muller-Lyer discovers the Muller-Lyer illusion
1890 - Wilhelm Ostwald discovers the membrane theory of nerve conduction 1891 - H. Quincke introduces the lumbar puncture
1891 - Wilhelm von Waldeyer coins the term neuron
1891 - Luigi Luciani publishes manuscript on the cerebellum
1892 - Salomen Eberhard Henschen localizes vision to calcarine fissure
1892 - American Psychological Association formed
1893 - Paul Emil Flechsig describes myelinization of the brain
1893 - Charles Scott Sherrington coins the term proprioceptive
1894 - Franz Nissl stains neurons with dahlia violet
1895 - William His first uses the term hypothalamus
1895 - Wilhelm Konrad Roentgen invents the X-ray
1895 - Heinrick Quincke performs lumbar puncture to study cerebrospinal fluid
1896 - Max von Frey details "stimulus hairs" to test the somatosensory system
1896 - Rudolph Albert von Kolliker coins the term axon
1896 - Joseph Babinski describes the Babinski Sign
1896 - Emil Kraeplein describes dementia praecox
1897 - Ivan Petrovich Pavlov publishes work on physiology of digestion
1897 - Karl Ferdinand Braun invents the oscilloscope
1897 - John Jacob Abel isolates adrenalin
1897 - Charles Scott Sherrington coins term synapse
1897 - Ferdinand Blum uses formaldehyde as brain fixative
1898 - C.S. Sherrington describes decerebrate rigidity in cat
1898 - Camillo Golgi discovers the Golgi apparatus
1898 - Edward L. Thorndike describes the puzzle box
1898 - Bayer Drug Company markets heroin as nonaddicting cough medicine
1898 - John Newport Langley coins term autonomic nervous system
1899 - Francis Gotch describes a "refractory phase" between nerve impulses
1899 - Bayer AG introduces aspirin
1899 - August Bier uses cocaine for intraspinal anesthesia

1900 - 1950

1900 - Sigmund Freud publishes The Interpretation of Dreams
1900 - C.S. Sherrington states that cerebellum is head ganglion of the proprioceptive system
1902 - Julius Bernstein proposes membrane theory for cells
1903 - Ivan Pavlov coins term conditioned reflex
1903 - Alfred W. Campbell studies cytoarchitecture of anthropoid cerebral cortex
1904 - Procaine is synthesized
1905 - Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon have their first intelligence test
1906 - Alois Alzheimer describes presenile degeneration
1906 - Golgi and Cajal-Nobel Prize-Structure of the Nervous System
1906 - Sir Charles S. Sherrington publishes The Integrative Action of the Nervous system that describes the synapse and motor cortex
1907 - Ross Granville Harrison describes tissue culture methods
1907 - John N. Langley introduces the concept of receptor molecules
1908 - Vladimir Bekhterew describes the superior nucleus of the vestibular nerve (Bekhterew's nucleus)
1908 - V. Horsley and R.H. Clarke design stereotaxic instrument

Harvey Cushing

1909 - Harvey Cushing is first to electrically stimulate human sensory cortex
1909 - Korbinian Brodmann describes 52 discrete cortical areas
1910 - Emil Kraepelin names Alzheimer's disease
1911 - Allvar Gullstrand-Nobel Prize-Optics of the eye
1911 - Eugen Bleuler coins term schizophrenia
1913 - Santiago Ramon y Cajal develops gold chloride-mercury stain to show astrocytes
1913 - Edwin Ellen Goldmann finds blood brain barrier impermeable to large molecules
1913 - Edgar Douglas Adrian publishes work on all-or-none principle in nerve
1913 - Walter Samuel Hunter devises delayed-response test
1914 - Robert Barany-Nobel Prize-Vestibular apparatus
1914 - Henry H. Dale isolates acetylcholine
1915 - J.G. Dusser De Barenne describes activity of brain after strychnine application
1915 - Aspirin becomes available without a prescription
1916 - Richard Henneberg coins term cataplexy
1918 - Walter E. Dandy introduces the ventriculography
1919 - Cecile Vogt describes over 200 cortical areas
1919 - Walter E. Dandy introduces the air encephalography
1919 - Gordon Morgan Holmes localizes vision to striate area
1920 - Society of Neurological Surgeons is founded
1920 - Henry Head publishes "Studies in Neurology"
1921 - Otto Loewi publishes work on Vagusstoff
1921 - Hermann Rorschach develops the ink blot test
1921 - John Augustus Larsen and Leonard Keeler develop the polygraph
1922 - Army Medical Library established (was the Library of the Surgeon General's Office)
1924 - Charles Scott Sherrington discovers the stretch reflex
1925 - C. von Economo and G.N. Koskinas revise Brodmann's cortical nomenclature of the cerebral cortex
1926 - Percival Bailey and Harvey Cushing publish paper describing more the 2,000 neuroepithelial neoplasms
1927 - Chester William Darrow studies galvanic skin reflex in US
1928 - P. Bard suggests the neural mechanism of rage is in the diencephalon
1928 - Walter R. Hess reports "affective responses" to hypothalamic stimulation
1928 - John Fulton publishes his observations (made in 1926 and 1928) of the sounds of blood flowing over the human visual cortex
1929 - Hans Berger demonstrates first human electroencephalogram
1929 - Karl Lashley defines "equipotentiality" and "mass action"
1927 - J. Wagner-Jauregg - Nobel Prize-Malaria to treat dementia paralyses
1929 - Joseph Erlanger and Herbert Spencer Gasser publish work on the correlation of nerve fiber size and function
1930 - John Carew Eccles shows central inhibition of flexor reflexes
1932 - Max Knoll and Ernst Ruska invent the electron microscope
1932 - Jan Friedrich Tonnies develops multichannel ink-writing EEG machine
1932 - Edgar Douglas Adrian and Charles S. Sherrington share Nobel Prize for work on the function of neurons
1932 - J.F. Toennies and Brian Matthews design the differential amplifier
1932 - Walter B. Cannon coins the term homeostasis
1933 - Ralph Waldo Gerard describes first experimental evoked potentials
1934 - S. Howard Bartley performs studies on cortical visual evoked potentials in rabbits
1935 - Frederic Bremer uses cerveau isole preparation to study sleep
1936 - Egas Moniz publishes work on the first human frontal lobotomy
1936 - Henry Hallett Dale and Otto Loewi share Nobel Prize for work on the chemical transmission between nerves
1936 - Walter Freeman performs first lobotomy in the United States
1937 - James Papez publishes work on limbic circuit
1936 - Massachusetts General Hospital has first EEG laboratory
1937 - Heinrich Kluver and Paul Bucy publish work on bilateral temporal lobectomies
1937 - James W. Papez develops "visceral theory" of emotion
1937 - J.Z. Young suggests that the squid giant axon can be used to understand nerve cells
1938 - B.F. Skinner publishes "The Behavior of Organisms" that describes operant conditioning
1938 - Albert Hofmann synthesizes LSD
1938 - Ugo Cerletti and Lucino Bini treat human patients with electroshock
1939 - Carl Pfaffman describes directionally sensitive cat mechanoreceptors
1939 - Nathaniel Kleitman publishes Sleep and Wakefulness
1943 - John Raymond Brobeck describes hypothalamic hyperphasia
1944 - Joseph Erlanger and Herbert Spencer Gasser share Nobel Prize for work on the functions of single nerve fiber
1946 - Theodor Rasmussen describes the olivocochlear bundle (bundle of Rasmussen)
1946 - Kenneth Cole develops the voltage clamp
1947 - The American EEG Society is founded
1948 - The World Health Organization is founded

Egas Moniz

1949 - A.C.A.F. Egas Moniz - Nobel Prize-Leucotomy to treat certain psychoses
1949 - Walter Rudolph Hess receives Nobel Prize for work on the "Interbrain"
1949 - Horace Winchell Magoun defines the reticular activating system
1949 - G. Moruzzi and H. Magoun publish Brain Stem Reticular Formation and Activation of the EEG
1949 - Donald O. Hebb publishes The Organization of Behavior: A Neuropsychological Theory

1950 - present

1950 - Karl Lashley publishes "In Search of the Engram"
1950 - Eugene Roberts identifies GABA in the brain
1950 - The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke established (it has gone through several name changes)
1951 - MAO-inhibitors introduced to treat psychotics
1952 - A.L. Hodgkin and A.F. Huxley first describe the voltage clamp
1953 - Eugene Aserinski and Nathaniel Kleitman describe rapid eye movements (REM) during sleep
1953 - H. Kluver and E. Barrera introduce Luxol fast blue MBS stain
1953 - Stephen Kuffler publishes work on center-surround, on-off organization of retinal ganglion cell receptive fields
1954 - James Olds describes rewarding effects of hypothalamic stimulation
1954 - John Lilly invents the "isolation tank"
1954 - Chlorpromazine was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration
1956 - L. Leksell uses ultrasound to examine the brain
1956 - National Library of Medicine named (was the Army Medical Library)

Wilder Penfield

1957 - W. Penfield and T. Rasmussen devise motor and sensory humunculus
1960 - Oleh Hornykiewicz shows that brain dopamine is lower than normal in Parkinson's disease patients
1961 - Georg Von Bekesy awarded the Nobel Prize for his work on the function of the cochlea
1963 - John Carew Eccles, Alan Lloyd Hodgkin and Andrew Fielding Huxley share Nobel Prize for work on the mechanisms of the neuron cell membrane
1965 - Ronald Melzack and Patrick D. Wall publish gate control theory of pain
1967 - Ragnar Arthur Granit, Halden Keffer Hartline and George Wald share Nobel Prize for work on the mechanisms of vision
1968 - National Eye Institute is established
1969 - D.V. Reynolds describes the analgesic effect of electrical stimulation of the periaqueductal gray
1969 - The Society for Neuroscience is founded
1970 - Julius Axelrod, Bernard Katz and Ulf Svante von Euler share Nobel Prize for work on neurotransmitters
1972 - C. Hounsfield develops x-ray computed tomography
1973 - Candace Pert and Solomon Snyder demonstrate opioid receptors in brain
1973 - Sinemet is introduced as a treatment for Parkinson's disease
1973 - Konrad Z. Lorenz, Nikolaas Tinbergen and Karl von Frisch share Nobel Prize for work on ethology
1974 - National Institute on Drug Abuse established
1974 - International Association for the Study of Pain founded
1974 - John Hughes and Hans Kosterlitz discover enkephalin
1974 - M.E.Phelps, E.J.Hoffman and M.M.Ter Pogossian develop first PET scanner
1975 - John Hughes and Hans Kosterlitz publish work on enkephalins
1976 - Choh Hao Li and David Chung publish work on beta-endorphin
1977 - Roger Guillemin and Andrew Victor Schally share Nobel Prize for work on peptides in the brain
1981 - David Hunter Hubel and Torsten N. Wiesel-Nobel Prize-visual system

Roger Sperry

1981 - Roger Wolcott Sperry awarded Nobel Prize-functions brain hemispheres
1982 - Bengt Ingemar Bergstrom, John Robert Vane and Sune K. Bergstrom awarded Nobel Prize for the discovery of prostaglandins
1986 - Stanley Cohen and Rita Levi-Montalcini awarded Nobel prize for their work on the control of nerve cell growth
1987 - Fluoxetine (Prozac) introduced as treatment for depression
1990 - U.S. President George Bush declares the decade starting in 1990 the "Decade of the Brain"
1991 - Erwin Neher and Bert Sakmann share the Nobel Prize for their work on the function of singla ion channels
1992 - National Institute on Drug Abuse becomes part of the National Institutes of Health
1994 - Alfred G. Gilman and Martin Rodbell share the Nobel Prize for their discovery of G-protein coupled receptors and their role in signal transduction
1997 - Stanley B. Prusiner awarded the Nobel Prize for the discovery of prions; a new biological principle of infection