The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1 (of 2)James, William
Philosophy
The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1 (of 2)
James, William
Psychology
Interesting problems arise with regard to the seat of tactile and
muscular sensibility. Hitzig, whose experiments on _dogs' brains_
fifteen years ago opened the entire subject which we are discussing,
ascribed the disorders of motility observed after ablations of the
motor region to a loss of what he called muscular consciousness.
The animals do not notice eccentric positions of their limbs, will
stand with their legs crossed, with the affected paw resting on its
back or hanging over a table's edge, etc.; and do not resist our
bending and stretching of it as they resist with the unaffected paw.
Goltz, Munk, Schiff, Herzen, and others promptly ascertained an equal
defect of cutaneous sensibility to pain, touch, and cold. The paw
is not withdrawn when pinched, remains standing in cold water, etc.
Ferrier meanwhile denied that there was any true anæsthesia produced
by ablations in the motor zone, and explains the appearance of it as
an effect of the sluggish motor responses of the affected side.[43]
Munk[44] and Schiff[45], on the contrary, conceive of the 'motor
zone' as essentially sensory, and in different ways explain the motor
disorders as secondary results of the anæsthesia which is always there,
Munk calls the motor zone the Fühlsphäre of the animal's limbs, etc.,
and makes it coördinate with the Sehsphäre, the Hörsphäre, etc., the
entire cortex being, according to him, nothing but a projection-surface
for sensations, with no exclusively or essentially motor part. Such a
view would be important if true, through its bearings on the psychology
of volition. What is the truth? As regards the fact of cutaneous
anæsthesia from motor-zone ablations, all other observers are against
Ferrier, so that he is probably wrong in denying it. On the other hand,
Munk and Schiff are wrong in making the motor symptoms _depend_ on
the anæsthesia, for in certain rare cases they have been observed to
exist not only without insensibility, but with actual hyperæsthesia of
the parts.[46] The motor and sensory symptoms seem, therefore, to be
independent variables.
_In monkeys_ the latest experiments are those of Horsley and
Schaefer,[47] whose results Ferrier accepts. They find that excision
of the hippocampal convolution produces transient insensibility of
the opposite side of the body, and that permanent insensibility is
produced by destruction of its continuation upwards above the corpus
callosum, the so-called _gyrus fornicatus_ (the part just below
the 'calloso-marginal fissure' in Fig. 7). The insensibility is at
its maximum when the entire tract comprising both convolutions is
destroyed. Ferrier says that the sensibility of monkeys is 'entirely
unaffected' by ablations of the motor zone,[48] and Horsley and
Schaefer consider it by no means necessarily abolished.[49] Luciani
found it diminished in his three experiments on apes.[50]
[Illustration: FIG. 20.--Luciani's Tactile Region in the Dog.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account