The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1 (of 2)James, William
Philosophy
The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1 (of 2)
James, William
Psychology
Victims of motor aphasia generally have other disorders. One which
interests us in this connection has been called _agraphia_: they have
lost the power to _write_. They can read writing and understand it;
but either cannot use the pen at all or make egregious mistakes with
it. The seat of the lesion here is less well determined, owing to an
insufficient number of good cases to conclude from.[15] There is no
doubt, however, that it is (in right-handed people) on the left side,
and little doubt that it consists of elements of the hand-and-arm
region specialized for that service, The symptom may exist when there
is little or no disability in the hand for other uses. If it does not
get well, the patient usually educates his right hemisphere, i.e.
learns to write with his left hand. In other cases of which we shall
say more a few pages later on, the patient can write both spontaneously
and at dictation, but cannot _read_ even what he has himself written!
All these phenomena are now quite clearly explained by separate
brain-centres for the various feelings and movements and tracts for
associating these together. But their minute discussion belongs to
medicine rather than to general psychology, and I can only use them
here to illustrate the principles of motor localization.[16] Under the
heads of sight and hearing I shall have a little more to say.
The different lines of proof which I have taken up establish
conclusively the proposition that _all the motor impulses which leave
the cortex pass out_, in healthy animals, _from the convolutions about
the fissure of Rolando_.
When, however, it comes to defining precisely what is involved in
a motor impulse leaving the cortex, things grow more obscure. Does
the impulse start independently from the convolutions in question,
or does it start elsewhere and merely flow through? And to what
particular phase of psychic activity does the activity of these
centres correspond? Opinions and authorities here divide; but it will
be better, before entering into these deeper aspects of the problem,
to cast a glance at the facts which have been made out concerning the
relations of the cortex to sight, hearing, and smell.
_Sight._
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