The lateral sulcus is one of the earliest-developing sulci of the human brain, appearing around the fourteenth week of gestational age.

The cerebral cortex was not depicted in a realistic manner until the 17th century with the Sylvian fissure being first accurately painted by Girolamo Fabrici d'Acquapendente in 1600 to provide plates for his Tabulae Pictae.

[4][5][6] Its first description is traditionally taken to be in 1641, possibly by Caspar Bartholin, where its discovery was attributed to Franciscus Sylvius (1614–1672), professor of medicine at Leiden University in the book Casp.

probably refers to Franciscus Sylvius] If you examine the indentations which are represented in Figure 5 quite attentively, you will notice that they are very deep and that the brain is divided from one side to the other by the 'anfractuosa fissura,' which starts in the front part near the ocular roots, and from there moves backwards above the base of the spinal cord, following the temporal bones, and it divides the upper part of the brain from the lower.

[4] Pop musician David Bowie referred to psychologist Carl Jung as "...crashing out with Sylvian" in his lyrics to "Drive-In Saturday" released on his 1973 album Aladdin Sane.

In 2015,[7] artist Tanja Stark suggested Bowie had drawn a cryptic link between Jung's waking hallucinatory visions (see The Red Book) and the Sylvian fissure, a region discovered by that time to produce hallucinogenic visions and ‘paranormal’ perceptions when electrically stimulated and, presciently in 2006, to generate what neurologists called an ‘illusory shadow person’ or doppelgänger phenomenon; themselves highly charged and recurring Bowie archetypes (Penfield [8] 1955; Arzy et al., 2006[9]).

You Pretty Things" sings of the hallucinatory spectre of .."a crack in the sky and a hand reaching down to me", evoking the iconic imagery of Michelangelo's painting The Creation of Adam.