In July 2010, the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL held a sombre conference, The Future of Medical History, to reflect on the impending closure of the centre and the prospects for the discipline in, and after, its wake. Among the many engaging sessions at the conference was a panel entitled ‘The neurological turn’, which addressed the current dominance of the neurosciences as universal explanans for all conditions of human nature: we are all familiar, for example, with the near-ubiquitous images of colour-coded brains used to account for everything from bodily disease to political preference. Moreover, as the panel and audience at the mentioned session specifically discussed the phenomena of neural imaging, it became apparent just how pervasive the claims of the modern neurosciences are, having an influence which spreads throughout the humanities and social sciences as well as the natural sciences. For this and a host of other reasons, historians in particular should pay close attention to the recent past of the neurosciences. Today's Neuroscience, Tomorrow's History: A Video Archive Project – another Wellcome production – is therefore a potentially useful contribution towards an as-yet unwritten history of the developments that have led to the present power of the so-called ‘neurological turn’.

The videos, which are all available online, consist of twelve hour-long interviews with men and women who have played significant roles in the development of the neurosciences in Britain since the middle of the twentieth century, and for the most part continue to do so. Reflecting the very broad church of the neurosciences, the interviewees have been grouped into three distinct areas: neuro-pharmacology, neuro-psychology/-psychiatry and neuro-imaging, with subjects covered within these areas ranging from the molecular level, with chemical signalling in the peripheral nervous system, to the level of the population in studies of psychiatric epidemiology. Discussions of experimental and theoretical developments are punctuated throughout by biographical excursions, and on occasions we are presented with behind-the-scenes details from episodes of real historical interest. Amongst the interviews, Salvador Moncada's description of the race to establish the physiological actions of nitric oxide, and Richard Frackowiak's detailing of the early days of the Functional Imaging Laboratory (FIL), for example, both provide notable accounts of significant events in the field. Meanwhile, from Ann Silver and the recently deceased Richard Gregory we gain an insight into the frugal conditions for researchers operating in postwar British institutions. Other more general themes also arise from the interviews. The deliberate mid-century rejection of behaviourism and uptake of cognitivism amongst neurologically minded scientists, and the continual yet changing influence of politics – both national and international – have clearly had enormous effects on the routes taken among the neurosciences, and are themes deserving of our continued attention. It is equally clear too how the interviewed neuroscientists, practising from the late 1950s onwards, were often keen to fit their theories and discoveries into the framework of a genetic explanation: a telling point, given that neuroscience has arguably replaced genetics as the catch-all science for the twenty-first century. Also apparent is the influence of technological developments: the final four interviews, on neuro-imaging, make clear how the growth of this particular subdiscipline has been largely dependent on techniques originating in the physical sciences. All of these are interesting ideas. However, while this video project has many clear qualities and uses, the methodological approach of the project creates as many questions as it provides answers.

The interviews, which are well filmed and well presented, have been edited to create a continuous narrative from each scientist, with the voice of the interviewer – and thus the questions – cut out. This raises the issue of precisely what was being asked: was, for example, the repeated emphasis made of the therapeutic outcomes of their work an indication of how the scientists viewed their own contributions, or was it a consequence of what the interviewer was interested in? Furthermore, given the answers we see edited together, we might also ask whether the unseen questions being posed by the interviewer were really of the type we would like to have seen posed in the first place. Scientists are notorious for presenting well rehearsed, retrospectively constructed memoirs of their work in oral histories, which is reason enough to suggest that interviewers need to push their subjects hard to draw meaningful motives and explanations from the process. Moreover, the history of the neurosciences is already a field largely dominated by ‘scientist historians’, a fact which underlines the necessity of bringing an independent, reflexive historical perspective to bear on the development of the modern neurosciences. In this task, the present interview series takes a not insignificant step, but more clearly remains to be done.

Ultimately, I was left with a raft of further questions from the interviews, which may well have been an intended outcome of this novel project. Is it coincidence that over half of the interviewees are closely associated with either UCL or the Wellcome Trust? And how exactly should the interviews be utilized: are they best left as an archive for future historians to discover and interpret, or do they provide source material enough for histories to be written now? Indeed, are they even intended to constitute a history in themselves? The neurosciences encompass such a vast range of activities and approaches, and have expanded at such a great speed over the last few decades, that understanding how and why they have developed as they have is both an important and an enormous task. It is, however, a task which will be made all the more difficult without the tools – like the video series in question – that the Wellcome Trust Centre has until now provided for all historians of medicine.