The researchers repeatedly saw the exact same patterns reproduced while the rats slept-so clearly that they could tell what point in the maze the rat was dreaming about, and whether the animal was running or walking in the dream. Neurons in the brain fire in distinctive patterns while a rat in a maze performs particular tasks. MIT researchers now know not only that rats dream, but what they dream about. But any pet owner who has heard her dog woof or seen his cat twitch during sleep knows that is not true. He believed that during a dream, the awakened soul may see the future, “an award of joy or sorrow drawing near.” So it’s no wonder that humans were quick to reserve dreams for people alone researchers for many years claimed dreams were a property of “higher” minds. Pindar of Thebes, the Greek lyric poet, suggested that the soul is more active while dreaming than while awake. By means of historical objects, selected original text samples and vivid graphics, the exhibition shows what it meant to be “ensouled” in ancient times.“Humans have always exalted dreams. Nine “intervention areas” presented the latest results of research on texts by Hippocrates, Plato, Aristotle, Galen and other ancient authors. The exhibition introduced three important questions that were central to classical philosophers and physicians alike:

The site for this “intervention” is the central room housing the 19th century physician and pathologist Rudolf Virchow’s specimen collection, which was envisaged as a spatialized “map” of the human body. They do so by ‘intervening’ in the permanent exhibition of the Berlin Medical History Museum. With this exhibition, members of the Topoi research group (D-2) Mapping Body and Soul and of the Alexander von Humboldt research programme “Medicine of the Mind, Philosophy of the Body: Discourses of Health and Well-Being in the Ancient World” presented their ongoing research on ancient conceptions of the interaction between body and soul and attempts at localization of the soul within the human body. Thus pathologies of body and mind indicated where and how the functions of the soul were being disrupted, and played a valuable part in understanding the nature and the operations of the soul. From the ways in which the soul’s instruments functioned or failed to function, as in cases of illness, ancient philosophers and medical thinkers tried to infer the nature of the soul itself. The body in return was thought of as carrying out the functions of the soul as its organon–the Greek word for instrument. The soul enabled the material body to function so that human beings could move or think.

It was also a biological principle that gave life and structure to the body. In Graeco-Roman thought the soul was not only the basis of an individual person’s thinking, feeling or moral character. The exhibition “The Soul is an Octopus” examined ancient conceptions of the soul and its interaction with the human body.

The soul of an octopus