(In order to facilitate orientation we may refer to C. TOLDT: ›Anatomischer Atlas›, 1899, 8 Lieferung, Fig. 92: ›Querschnitt des verlängerten Markes und der Gehirnstiele. Verlauf der Pyramidenbahn von der Pyramidenkreuzung an durch die Pyramide, die Brücke und die Basis des Grosshirnstiels in die innere Kapsel, woselbst sie in den Stiel des Stabkranzes, Pedunculus coronæ radiatæ, eingeht.›) SWEDENBORG, who had studied and often quoted both WILLIS and VIEUSSENS, likewise attributed a very great significance to the corpus striatum. All the sensory impressions pass through it to the brain, and all the voluntary impulses to motion pass out by the same path. (›The Brain›, No. 67). ›It is›, says he in his figurative way, ›in a certain sense, the Mercury of the Olympus; it announces to the soul what is happening to the body, and it bears the mandates of the soul to the body› (›The Brain›, No. 67). And as the corpus striatum lay most immediately under the anterior (superior) region of the brain, and was in close connection with it, so the sensory impressions would for the most part pass to this region, and the voluntary impulses to motion would likewise proceed from it (›The Brain›, Nos. 66, 67). The same VIEUSSENS had furnished a very detailed description of the passage of the nerve tracts in question, which pass through the corpus striatum and capsula interna, and had followed them both upwards towards the hemispheres of the brain and downwards towards the spinal cord. When he followed them upwards, he found that they formed _three regions_ in the ›centrum ovale›: the _regio superna_, highest up nearest the crown, the _regio media_, in the middle, and the _regio infima_, lowest down, and consequently nearest the fissure of Sylvius. (R. VIEUSSENS: ›Neurographia univ.›, pp. 115 and 117). In these regions of the cerebral medulla, especially in the highest, VIEUSSENS considered that the soul’s activity had its seat: with the help of ›spiritus animalis› the soul here had an opportunity of receiving the sensory impressions, and in the fine and finest nerve fibres there were here formed sensory images, conceptions, (Op. cit. p. 129), here the memory images were preserved, (Op. cit. p. 135), and here the faculty of judgment had its seat, (Op. cit. p. 137), etc. In these regions, especially in the highest, the will also had its seat and origin, and at its command the ›spiritus animalis› streamed out through the nerves, thus conveying the impulses to motion to the various muscles of the body. (Op. cit. pp. 122, 123, 188, _et seqq._).