The Columbian exchange: American physiologists and neuroscience techniques

Neurophysiological techniques, far from being mere manual or instrumental procedures, are intimately bound up with the concepts and social processes of experimental physiology. This proposition is argued by examining the prepublication history of four important technical innovations in 20th-century neurophysiology, and their associated innovators: the vacuum-tube amplifier (Lucas, Williams, and Forbes, 1912-1922); the cathode-ray oscillograph (Gasser, Newcomer, and Erlanger, 1919-1923); single-fiber recording (Adrian, Zotterman, Forbes, Davis, and Gasser, 1912-1926); and the intracellular microelectrode (Graham, Gerard, Ling, Hodgkin, and Nastuk, 1940-1950). From these episodes I conclude that: each technique has its own set of conceptual presuppositions, limitations, and biases--in a word, techniques are idea-laden; techniques have an inertia of use that is overcome often only in unusual circumstances of crisis or opportunity; techniques, in their origin, evaluation, demonstration, and diffusion, are embedded in a network of social contacts among researchers; and 4) techniques evolve with favorite biological materials that, by fitting the apparatus and the questions asked, also impose limits on the concepts educed from that preparation.