The body of executed murderer Annie Green was brought to Willis and his colleagues for an autopsy. The moment the coffin was opened, the doctors heard a gasp. They found that Ms. Greene was still breathing. Thanks to the efforts of Willis and his colleagues, Ms. Green survived and was given a reprieve from death. She died fifteen years later. It is said that at the time this event caused people to be jealous of Willis, and they wondered how many lives this discovery would save in the future. Zhou Yan, Neurosurgery Department, Air Force General Hospital This is Thomas Willis, a legendary figure in the history of neuroscience. Despite the rare progress made by Leonardo q Leonardo da Vinci and others in his journey to discover the brain, neuroscience was only in its infancy and did not flourish until the seventeenth century, thanks largely to the outstanding contribution of the Englishman Thomas Willis (1621-1675). willis attended Oxford University and then joined the elite society of masters of the arts ( Thomas Willis was then involved in the founding of the Royal Society of London. “Snot is the excrement of the brain” – this was the scientific common knowledge of the society at that time. It was in such an era that Willis provided a rigorous scientific explanation of the definition of the organ – a world first. After several years of research, in 1664 Willis published “Cerebri Anatome”, which broke the “social common sense” of the time with a detailed anatomical chart. This remarkable work provided the first detailed and complete picture of the structure of the brain, including the major regions of the brain, the cranial nerves, and the cerebrovascular structures. The terms “neurology, lobes, neural reflexes and cerebral hemispheres” were coined by Willis. The “Ring of Willis,” as it is known to physicians, is named after Thomas Willis. —- It is the most, most, most important vascular structure in the skull. structure in the skull. Another major contribution of Willis was the recognition that there is a causal relationship between memory and higher functions of the brain. This discovery was made possible by Willis’ study of animal brains, where he noticed that the morphology of the cerebral cortex in these animals differed greatly, with more cortex forming more folds. This is because the volume of the skull is fixed, so the more cortical layers fold into each other (heck, my head is floating in buns as I write this). Also, Willis noted that when these folds (cortex) of the brain are underdeveloped or damaged, there is a corresponding intellectual disability. In another interesting discovery, Willis noted the existence of a fluid-filled structure in the deeper part of the brain – the “ventricle” – another of Willis’ Another major breakthrough for Willis. Previously, many believed that the ventricles controlled different higher functions, such as reasoning and imagination, and Willis challenged this traditional view based on his own observations and research – and ultimately won. Willis also discovered a structure hidden deep in the cerebral hemisphere, shaped like a “loin”, which he named the “striatum”, roughly aligned with the ear. The origin of its name is attributed to its internal striated structure, composed of alternating white matter, lipid-rich myelin gray matter, and unmyelinated gray matter. After the death of patients suffering from movement disorders, Willis removed the brains of these individuals for study, and he also observed the dog brain, before proposing that these striatal structures were of paramount importance for casual movement. Clearly, this idea was correct. Indeed, in both Huntington’s chorea and Parkinson’s disease, the striatum is affected, the former mainly by degeneration of striatal structures, and the latter by the inability of the striatum to receive signals from other structures of the brain. Willis then turned his attention to the cerebellum, a structure that is attached to the lower posterior part of the cerebral hemisphere. The cerebellum is present in all brains, even the simplest ones. This gave Willis a hint that the function of the cerebellum must be the most basic and consistent. This led to the conclusion that the function of the cerebellum is most likely related to involuntary movements, a form of movement that is necessary for all animals to maintain their basic life activities, such as respiratory functions. In addition, the cerebellum controls the involuntary movements of skeletal muscles, but is not responsible for such involuntary movements as heartbeat and digestion. After all, Willis lived in the seventeenth century, and the exploration of the brain, although limited, was unprecedented.