The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1 (of 2) — John Shaqi
The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1 (of 2)James, William
Philosophy
The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1 (of 2)
James, William
Psychology
_The acts of all the centres involve the use of the same muscles._ When
a headless frog's hind leg wipes the acid, he calls into play all the
leg-muscles which a frog with his full medulla oblongata and cerebellum
uses when he turns from his back to his belly. Their contractions are,
however, _combined_ differently in the two cases, so that the results
vary widely. We must consequently conclude that specific arrangements
of cells and fibres exist in the cord for wiping, in the medulla for
turning over, etc. Similarly they exist in the thalami for jumping
over seen obstacles and for balancing the moved body; in the optic
lobes for creeping backwards, or what not. But in the hemispheres,
since the presence of these organs _brings no new elementary form of
movement_ with it, but only _determines differently the occasions_
on which the movements shall occur, making the usual stimuli less
fatal and machine-like; we need suppose no such machinery _directly_
co-ordinative of muscular contractions to exist. We may rather
assume, when the mandate for a wiping-movement is sent forth by the
hemispheres, that a current goes straight to the wiping-arrangement in
the spinal cord, exciting this arrangement as a whole. Similarly, if an
intact frog wishes to jump over a stone which he sees, all he need do
is to excite from the hemispheres the jumping-centre in the thalami or
wherever it may be, and the latter will provide for the details of the
execution. It is like a general ordering a colonel to make a certain
movement, but not telling him how it shall be done.[5]
_The same muscle, then, is repeatedly represented at different
heights;_ and at each it enters into a different combination with other
muscles to co-operate in some special form of concerted movement.
_At each height the movement is discharged by some particular form
of sensorial stimulus._ Thus in the cord, the skin alone occasions
movements; in the upper part of the optic lobes, the eyes are added;
in the thalami, the semi-circular canals would seem to play a part;
whilst the stimuli which discharge the hemispheres would seem not so
much to be elementary sorts of sensation, as groups of sensations
forming determinate _objects_ or _things. Prey_ is not pursued nor are
_enemies_ shunned by ordinary hemisphereless frogs. Those reactions
upon complex circumstances which we call instinctive rather than
reflex, are already in this animal dependent on the brain's highest
lobes, and still more is this the case with animals higher in the
zoological scale.
The results are just the same if, instead of a frog, we take a pigeon,
and cut out his hemispheres as they are ordinarily cut out for a
lecture-room demonstration. There is not a movement natural to him
which this brainless bird cannot perform if expressly excited thereto;
only the inner promptings seem deficient, and when left to himself
he spends most of his time crouched on the ground with his head sunk
between his shoulders as if asleep.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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