Brain and mind alike consist of simple elements, sensory and motor. "All
nervous centres," says Dr. Hughlings Jackson, "from the lowest to the
very highest (the substrata of consciousness), are made up of nothing
else than nervous arrangements, representing impressions and
movements.... I do not see of what other materials the brain _can_ be
made." Meynert represents the matter similarly when he calls the cortex
of the hemispheres the surface of projection for every muscle and every
sensitive point of the body. The muscles and the sensitive points are
_represented_ each by a cortical point, and the Brain is little more
than the sum of all these cortical points, to which, on the mental side,
as many sensations and _ideas_ correspond. The sensations and ideas of
sensation and of motion are, in turn, the elements out of which the Mind
is built according to the analytic school of psychology. The relations
between objects are explained by 'associations' between the ideas; and
the emotional and instinctive tendencies, by associations between ideas
and movements. The same diagram can symbolize both the inner and the
outer world; dots or circles standing indifferently for cells or ideas,
and lines joining them, for fibres or associations. The associationist
doctrine of 'ideas' may be doubted to be a literal expression of the
truth, but it probably will always retain a didactic usefulness. At all
events, it is interesting to see how well physiological analysis plays
into its hands. To proceed to details.
[Illustration: FIG. 41.--Left hemisphere of monkey's brain. Outer
surface.]
=The Motor Region.=--The one thing which is _perfectly_ well established
is this, that the 'central' convolutions, on either side of the fissure
of Rolando, and (at least in the monkey) the calloso-marginal
convolution (which is continuous with them on the mesial surface where
one hemisphere is applied against the other), form the region by which
all the motor incitations which leave the cortex pass out, on their way
to those executive centres in the region of the pons, medulla, and
spinal cord from which the muscular contractions are discharged in the
last resort. The existence of this so-called 'motor zone' is established
by anatomical as well as vivisectional and pathological evidence.
The accompanying figures (Figs. 41 and 42), from Schaefer and Horsley,
show the topographical arrangement of the monkey's motor zone more
clearly than any description.
[Illustration: FIG. 42.--Left hemisphere of monkey's brain. Mesial
surface.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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