Looking at nerves, seeing the mind: Yu-Chuan Tsang as a modern Chinese physiological psychologist
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RECOLLECTION Looking at nerves, seeing the mind: Yu-Chuan Tsang as a modern Chinese physiological psychologist Shiying Li1, Wei Chen1&, Shengjun Wen2 1
Center for Brain, Mind, and Education, Shaoxing University, Shaoxing 312000, China Department of Cognitive Neurology, Hertie Institute for Clinical Brain Research, University of Tübingen, 72076 Tübingen, Germany & Correspondence: [email protected] (W. Chen) Accepted September 28, 2020
Yu-Chuan Tsang (臧玉洤, 1901–1964), styled Botan (伯潭), was an outstanding Chinese physiological psychologist, a comparative neuroscientist, and a neuroanatomist (Fig. 1). He was a member of the First Council of the Chinese Society for Anatomical Sciences, an executive member of the second, third, fourth and fifth councils, and the Chairman of the Third Council. He was one of the founders of neuroanatomy in modern China and the Beijing Medical College (now the Department of Medicine at Peking University). Neuroanatomy is a discipline that consists of making observations and making recordings. Moreover, there are different interdisciplinary subjects based on neuroscience, including cognitive science, neurobehavioral science, neuroengineering, and psychology. Tsang’s academic career followed an opposite direction, starting from psychology and turning to neuroanatomy, where he made remarkable achievements. Tsang was born in Dongyang Ge village, in Wan County of Hebei Province on May 10th, 1901. He became a student of the Chinese Department at Beijing University in 1918, where he later changed to the Philosophy Department. After graduating from Beijing University in 1924, he worked as a compiler at the Shanghai Commercial Press. In 1926, he joined the Psychology Department of Tsinghua University as a teaching assistant. In 1929, Tsang was offered an opportunity to study in the United States, paid for by Hebei Province. In the United States, he studied in the Department of Neuroanatomy at the University of Chicago under Professor Charles Judson Herrick, the founder of comparative neurology (O’Leary and Bishop, 1960) and comparative neurophysiology (Bullock, 1983). In 1934, he completed a study entitled “Functions of visual areas in the rat cerebellar cortex in maze learning and retention”, and obtained a PhD. During his stay in the United States, Tsang devoted himself to basic
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theoretical research in comparative psychology and neuroanatomy and published several papers in top international journals. In 1936, Tsang returned to China after visiting and studying in England, France, Germany, and Italy, to serve as Professor in the Department of Psychology of Tsinghua University. In 1937, after the “Lugou Bridge Incident”, he joined the Department of Anatomy at the Beijing Union Medical College, where he worked as a lecturer in human anatomy and neuroanatomy. Then, Tsang gradually turned the focus of his research to neuroanatomy. He translated many classic monographs, including “the Neurological basis of animal behavior and the smell, taste, and allied sense
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