While the brain was commonly understood as a nonrenewable organ in the early 1900s, Santiago Ramón y Cajal, "father of neuroscience", used the term neuronal plasticity to describe nonpathological changes in the structure of adult brains. Based on his renowned Neuron doctrine, Cajal first described the neuron as the fundamental unit of the nervous system that later served as an essential foundation to develop the concept of neural plasticity. He used the term plasticity in reference to his work on findings of degeneration and regeneration in the central nervous system after a person had reached adulthood, specifically. Many neuroscientists used the term plasticity only to explain the regenerative capacity of the peripheral nervous system, which Cajal's conceptual transfer of the term gave rise to a controversial discussion.