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An empirical, 21st century evaluation of phrenology

View ORCID ProfileO. Parker Jones, View ORCID ProfileF. Alfaro-Almagro, View ORCID ProfileS. Jbabdi
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/243089
O. Parker Jones
1FMRIB, Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging, Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Oxford, John Radcliffe Hospital, Headington, Oxford OX3 9DU, UK
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  • For correspondence: oiwi.parkerjones@ndcn.ox.ac.uk
F. Alfaro-Almagro
1FMRIB, Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging, Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Oxford, John Radcliffe Hospital, Headington, Oxford OX3 9DU, UK
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S. Jbabdi
1FMRIB, Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging, Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Oxford, John Radcliffe Hospital, Headington, Oxford OX3 9DU, UK
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Abstract

Phrenology was a nineteenth century endeavour to link personality traits with scalp morphology. It has been both influential and fiercely criticised, not least because of the assumption that scalp morphology can be informative of the underlying brain function. Here we test this idea empirically, rather than dismissing it out of hand. Whereas nineteenth century phrenologists had access to coarse measurement tools (digital technology then referring to fingers), we were able to re-examine phrenology using 21st century methods and thousands of subjects drawn from the largest neuroimaging study to date. High-quality structural MRI was used to quantify local scalp curvature. The resulting measurements were compared against lifestyle measures acquired on the same cohort of subjects. We were careful to match a subset of lifestyle measures to phrenological ideas of brain organisation, in an effort to evoke the character of Victorian times. The results represent the most rigorous evaluation of phrenological claims to date.

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The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.
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Posted January 05, 2018.
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An empirical, 21st century evaluation of phrenology
O. Parker Jones, F. Alfaro-Almagro, S. Jbabdi
bioRxiv 243089; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/243089
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An empirical, 21st century evaluation of phrenology
O. Parker Jones, F. Alfaro-Almagro, S. Jbabdi
bioRxiv 243089; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/243089

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