Biographical Memoirs Volume 57 (1987) / Chapter Skim
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Hans-Lukas Teuber
Hans-Lukas Teuber
Pages 460-491
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Within a few years the department hack grown into a center of psychology and the brain sciences that came to be known and admired the world over. Only a man of his brilliance, scholarly acumen, and warm personal qualities could have accomplished such a feat in one ' The first lecture, which was to have been delivered January 12, 1977, was entitled "From Perception to Action." 461
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His colleague Professor Nauta said of him: "Luke was that rare person, describecT by Camus, as the true poet who would have no choice at all but to make poetry even in the desert."3 Whence came this magical, "highly improbable and very lovable man," as he was clescribe<1 by a brilliant young colleague, Ann Graybiel.4 Hans-Lukas Teuber was born August 7, 1916, in Berlin, the son of Dr. Eugen Teuber and Rose Knopf Teuber.
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His first schooling was in a private preparatory school in Berlin, and he subsequently attended the College Frances (a Huguenot school) in Berlin for eight years, graduating in 1934 with a baccalaureat.
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zoology, comparative anatomy, and embryology. His teacher in physical chemistry was Professor Bernoulli, anct he worked with Professor Portman in the Zoological Institute.
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According to a perhaps apocryphal story, Lukas at first failect the mandatory German language examination at Harvard because, as a recent arrival to the United States, he clid not know enough English into which to translate the German text. His Navy stint, however, and a parttime position as assistant boys secretary at the Cambridge YMCA while he was a Harvard graduate student acceleratect his Americanization.
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Frequent personal contacts made me aware of the strategic role of experimental neurology within the framework of general biological science, and suggested a reconsideration of the earlier German work (Bethe, Uexkull, Weiss) in comparative physiology of nervous systems and problems of sensorimotor integration.
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The unique opportunity of observing effects of acute brain injuries resulted in a number of joint papers .
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This group held a series of conferences in an area that became known after the title of Norbert Wiener's book—as cybernetics; the discussions clealt with feedback theory anct communication theory and their possible relevance to the study of central nervous function. In 1961 Teuber left New York University for MIT but with certain misgivings: he hac]
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Weiskrantz has succinctly summarized the clepartment's further development uncier Teuber's leadership: To it he attracted scientists of great distinction from a variety of disciplines, as well as younger persons whose promise later was fulfilled; the contributions of his colleagues were as important in neurophysiology as in experimental psychology. He worked unceasingly to attract funds for their endeavors and to promote a genuinely interdisciplinary atmosphere, warm and paternalistic, in which he and his colleagues could flourish.
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The French neuropsychologist Hecaen has underscored the impact Teuber's approach has had on contemporary neurological procedures. The work carried out in New York University's Psychophysiological Laboratory constitutes the second phase.
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The resulting data led them to an increased recognition of the importance of problems of functional localization anct functional hemispheric lateralization. It became possible to specify the unilateral or bilateral nature of the clifficulties; and, as Hecaen points out, by demonstrating the significant associations among the symptoms, it became possible to reveal the functional deficit responsible for the various behavioral manifestat~ons.
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von Holst and H Mittelstaedt, "Des Reafferenzprinzip (Wechselswirkungen zwischen Zentralnervensystem und Peripherie)
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. involve an information flow that is the reverse of the classical Sherrington one: not from sensory to motor, from back to front, so to speak, but in the opposite direction, from motor and premotor to sensory and therefore from front to backer The concept was used to interpret results related to visual searching behavior, curious abnormalities in the reversal of certain types of reversible figures, and breakdowns in sorting and categorizing behavior.
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. Teuber recognized that "the key questions about perception and movement, memory and mood remain unanswerect"; but he was confident that the "converging evolution of experimental psychology, physiology and microanatomy together with comparative and developmental studies are bound to take us ever closer to our common goal: that of gaining a rational understanding of ourseIves."~3 In moving toward this goal he was untiring in his efforts as researcher, administrator, teacher, and promoter of neuropsychologyboth at home and abroad.
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:T the first committee to protect human subjects from untoward effects of psychological and other forms of experimentation. The MIT Review Committee on Human Subjects antedates by several years the university review committees set up under the supervision of the National Institutes of Health.
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As Lord Adrian once said, "He who can first explain and control paranoia will have found the means of producing it." Yet just for that reason, all of us here who are concerned with furthering man's understanding of man will have to abide by a new kind of Hippocratic oath, never to do harm, always to heal rather than hinder, to make human life richer, and to make it free.~7 It seems appropriate to conclude this memoir with two brief excerpts from the citation prepared by his MIT colleagues for the James M Killian Faculty Achievement Award (1976-771: Hans-Lukas Teuber, Professor of Psychology, founder and head of the Department of Psychology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is a man who joins the instincts of a penetrating experimenter and the experience of a brain scientist with the consummate style of a gifted teacher.
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Killian Faculty Achievement Award, Massachusetts Inset tote of Technology, 1976 -1977 HONORARY AND ELECTED MEMBERSHIPS National Academy of Sciences, 1972 American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1962 Society of Experimental Psychologists, 1960 National Institute of Neurology Faculty, Mexico, 1967 French Neurological Society, 1968 Institute of Medicine, 1975-1977 Sigma Xi SCIENTIFIC AND PROFESSIONAL SOCIETIES American Academy of Neurology American Association for the Advancement of Science American Neurological Association American Psychological Association Association for Research in Nervous and Mental Diseases Eastern Psychological Association European Brain and Behavior Society French Psychological Society (associe Stranger)
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478 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS International Brain Research Organization Psychonomic Society Society for Neuroscience EDITORIAL POSITIONS Coeditor, Experimental Brain Research, 1965 - 1977 Berlin Editorial Board, Springer-Verlag, Handbook of Sensory Physiolo~ |
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Veterans Administration, 1947-1960 Research Group on Head Injuries, World Federation of Neurology and the World Federation of Neurological Sciences, 1967-1969 !
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Disturbances in visual perception following cerebral lesions.
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Effects of total light flux on critical flicker frequency after frontal lobe lesion.
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Ability to discover hidden figures after cerebral lesions.
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Visual Field Defects After Penetrating Missile Wounds of the Brain. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
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Neuere Beobachtungen uber Sehstrahlung und Sehrinde. In: Neurophysiologie and Psychophysik des visuellen Systems, ed.
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O'Conner. Transactions of the Ciba Foundation Symposium.
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The frontal lobes and their function: Further observations on rodents, carnivores, subhuman primates, and man.
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Forsch., 31:1-14. 1968 Disorders of memory following penetrating missile wounds of the brain.
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_ . BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS of Head Injury, ed.
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1975 Recovery of function after brain injury in man. In: Outcome of Severe CNS Damage, Ciba Foundation Symposium, pp.
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A Study of Cingulotomy in Man. (A report to the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research.)
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