The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1 (of 2)James, William
Philosophy
The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1 (of 2)
James, William
Psychology
_In man_ we have the fact that one-sided paralysis from disease of the
opposite motor zone may or may not be accompanied with anæsthesia of
the parts. Luciani, who believes that the motor zone is also sensory,
tries to minimize the value of this evidence by pointing to the
insufficiency with which patients are examined. He himself believes
that in dogs the tactile sphere extends backwards and forwards of the
directly excitable region, into the frontal and parietal lobes (see
Fig. 20). Nothnagel considers that pathological evidence points in the
same direction;[51] and Dr. Mills, carefully reviewing the evidence,
adds the gyri fornicatus and hippocampi to the cutaneo-muscular
region in man.[52] If one compare Luciani's diagrams together (Figs.
14, 16, 19, 20) one will see that the entire parietal region of the
dog's skull is common to the four senses of sight, hearing, smell,
and touch, including muscular feeling. The corresponding region in
the human brain (upper parietal and supra-marginal gyri--see Fig. 17)
seems to be a somewhat similar place of conflux. Optical aphasias and
motor and tactile disturbances all result from its injury, especially
when that is on the left side.[53] The lower we go in the animal scale
the less differentiated the functions of the several brain-parts seem
to be.[54] It may be that the region in question still represents
in ourselves something like this primitive condition, and that the
surrounding parts, in adapting themselves more and more to specialized
and narrow functions, have left it as a sort of _carrefour_ through
which they send currents and converse. That it should be connected
with musculo-cutaneous feeling is, however, no reason why the motor
zone proper should not be so connected too. And the cases of paralysis
from the motor zone with no accompanying anæsthesia may be explicable
without denying all sensory function to that region. For, as my
colleague Dr. James Putnam informs me, sensibility is always harder to
kill than motility, even where we know for a certainty that the lesion
affects tracts that are both sensory and motor. Persons whose hand is
paralyzed in its movements from compression of arm-nerves during sleep,
still feel with their fingers; and they may still feel in their feet
when their legs are paralyzed by bruising of the spinal cord. In a
similar way, the motor cortex might be sensitive as well as motor, and
yet by this greater subtlety (or whatever the peculiarity may be) in
the sensory currents, the sensibility might survive an amount of injury
there by which the motility was destroyed. Nothnagel considers that
there are grounds for supposing the _muscular_ sense to be exclusively
connected with the parietal lobe and not with the motor zone. "Disease
of this lobe gives pure ataxy without palsy, and of the motor zone
pure palsy without loss of muscular sense."[55] He fails, however,
to convince more competent critics than the present writer,[56] so I
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