What is the name of the early, misguided attempt at studying brain functions that claimed bumps on the skull reveal personality traits?

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Phrenology is the name for the early, misguided attempt to study brain functions by feeling bumps on the skull and linking them to personality traits. It arose from the idea that different mental faculties resided in specific brain regions and that the skull would reflect the size of those areas, so practitioners believed bumps and ridges could reveal character and abilities. This notion is now discredited because skull shape does not reliably indicate cognitive or personality traits, even though the broader concept of localization of function is real—just not readable from the skull. In modern neuroscience, terms like association areas, Broca's area, and Wernicke's area refer to actual brain regions with tested roles: association areas integrate information across modalities, Broca's area is involved in speech production, and Wernicke's area is linked to language comprehension. These reflect evidence-based findings, not pseudoscientific skull readings.