Science in Culture Uttal Is Well Aware That “The Brain Is Not Homogenous but Made up of Regions Rocket Retrospective That Are Differentiated by Function”

Home , Woman in the Moon

book reviews impairment to each of the cognitive sub- domains in question. Science in culture Uttal is well aware that “the brain is not homogenous but made up of regions Rocket retrospective that are differentiated by function”. And he Frau im Mond, directed by Fritz Lang, an eerily is equally aware of some of the clinico- predictive tale of a journey to the Moon. anatomical correlations that have been Heike Langenberg established in behavioural neurology. But A slender rocket, destined for the Moon, appears he then proceeds to give “a totally different on the screen. Accompanied by cheering masses conceptualization of the localization prob- and ceremonial speeches, it makes its way from lem”. This restatement “offers, in place of a the hangar to the floating launch station. The specific function being precisely localized tension builds, the countdown runs, and the (that is, instantiated, represented or en- rocket takes off into space. coded) in a particular place, the idea of one This is not 16 July 1969, when Apollo 11 lifted

centre contributing to the operation of a off for the Moon. It is part of Fritz Lang’s last silent KINEMATHEK FILMMUSEUM BERLIN–DEUTSCHE complex system of nodes and loci that are movie, Frau im Mond (‘Woman in the Moon’), collectively responsible for the behaviour.” released in 1929 and long confined to the archives. Well, yes: this is precisely what every The film has now been reconstructed from the behavioural neurologist and neuro- original negatives in a cooperation between the psychologist has argued since (at least) Carl German Federal Film Archive and the Friedrich- Wernicke’s fractionation of the ‘aphasic Wilhelm-Murnau Foundation in Wiesbaden, and symptom complex’ in 1874. was first presented in superb quality at this year’s Sadly, Uttal does not engage with the international film festival in Berlin. details of this literature, despite acknowledg- Back in 1929, German film critics were not ing how clinical evidence supports the impressed by the pompous opening night of Frau claim that complex cognitive processes such im Mond. The Berliner Börsen-Courier as speech and calculation “involve widely newspaper declared that Lang’s talents were dispersed regions of the cerebral cortex”. wasted on his wife’s scripts, and the Vossische Rather, he rushes down the sexier path Zeitung dismissed the film as a movie for 14-year- of functional neuroimaging to discuss old boys. Nevertheless, Frau im Mond became the such techniques as electroencephalography, year’s most successful film in terms of sales. And positron-emission tomography and func- it caught the imagination of an unusual 17-year- tional magnetic resonance imaging. Here he old, Wernher von Braun, who was to become draws attention to failures of replication in head of German rocket development during the which seemingly slight changes in experi- Second World War and later one of the leading mental design, stimulus materials and task scientists in the US programme to develop the Shortly after the début of Frau im Mond, characteristics can lead to very different powerful Saturn rockets. It was a Saturn V rocket von Braun joined the German Society for Space patterns of brain activation. that lifted Apollo 11 to the Moon. Travel, and assisted Oberth in his research on These are all genuine problems, but what Von Braun was already interested in rocketry. liquid-fuel rockets. Oberth had been contracted needs to be debated here is the extent to In 1925 he had read Hermann Oberth’s 1923 by Lang and the film company UFA (Universum which they reflect our failure to design good book Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen (‘The Film AG) to build a man-sized rocket to be experiments rather than the brain’s failure Rocket into Interplanetary Space’). The book launched into the stratosphere as a gimmick for to instantiate distributed localization of allegedly spurred young Wernher’s interest in the film’s opening night. But the work was not function. Uttal also notes, correctly, that mathematics, and shot him to the top of his class. finished in time. It wasn’t until 1931 that the individual differences in brain organization Von Braun was not alone in his enthusiasm liquid-fuel rocket was finally ready to be patented. can undermine the reliability of associations for Oberth’s rockets. Rocket fever gripped the Money for rocket research was scarce — until between structure and function. Again, whole of 1920s Germany, and inspired Lang to the German army discovered the potential of however, this is a challenge to discover the make his film. Lang wanted his work to be based rocketry for less peaceful ends. By 1933, Captain range and limits of variation rather than a on the latest scientific knowledge, and so asked Walter Dornberger of the German Reichswehr cause for despair. A judicious conjunction of Oberth to act as technical adviser. The rockets had realized that rockets were potential weapons psychophysical experimentation, functional created for the film sets are startlingly similar to whose development was not regulated under the neuroimaging, and lesion studies will later rocket design. Treaty of Versailles. Von Braun received a research no doubt eventually elucidate the basic The plot of the film is a kitsch tale of love and grant from the armed services, and it was not long functional architecture of cognition. We can adventure. The flight to the Moon is motivated by before rocketry became classified research. then start on the really difficult issue of an old professor’s idea that gold is hidden in the With the military takeover, funds were no showing how, not where, neuroanatomical lunar mountains, and the main participants in longer a problem. But the scientists had sold and neurochemical structures and processes the journey — apart from the professor and his their souls to the Nazis and the dream of flying to instantiate our best guesses about the mouse — are three rocket engineers: two young the Moon was abandoned — until the cold war organization of the mind. men and Fräulein Friede, who is engaged to one provided a new backdrop for space travel. As Many of the problems of functional of the engineers but loved by both. An 11-year- a poignant reminder of the early years of localization that Uttal outlines are real old stowaway and an evil representative of global enthusiasm, the first successful German V2, enough, but he offers no new ways of solving finance compound the lunacy. Thea von Harbou’s launched on 3 October 1942 and developed by them and no convincing arguments that film script may have had its weaknesses: the film is von Braun and his associates, carried an emblem some other approach would resolve them. over-long at three hours. Nonetheless, the scenes symbolizing Frau im Mond. John C. Marshall is in the University Department featuring the rocket are magnificent — and, after Heike Langenberg is a physical sciences editor of Clinical Neurology, Radcliffe Infirmary, all, the audience loved it. at Nature. Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6HE, UK.

152 NATURE | VOL 414 | 8 NOVEMBER 2001 | www.nature.com