A history of how neural, behavioural and communicative subdisciplines coalesced in neuroscience to create a promising approach to understanding the relation of mind to brain. It chronicles the expansion of prominent centres of research and the development of innovative apparatus and concepts.

A history of how neural, behavioural and communicative subdisciplines coalesced in neuroscience to create a promising approach to understanding the relation of mind to brain. The text chronicles the westward expansion of prominent centres of research and the development of innovative apparatus and concepts. These tales, and those of the personalities involved, delineate the emergence of a biomedical endeavour that has been very successful in the creation of new knowledge.

Introduction - early North American science. Part 1 Neural sciences: prodromal 19th-century developments
passage to the 20th century
consolidation and discovery
electrophysiology overtakes morphology
new trails on fresh terrain
the peripheral nervous system
into the central nervous system. Part 2 Behavioural sciences: development of experimental psychology
animal behaviour and comparative psychology
prefrontal cortex of infrahuman primates
"what whale among the fishes - the theory of emotions"
sex and the brain
"the root of consciousness". Part 3 Communicative sciences: infrahuman communication
speech and human language
postscript.