The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1 (of 2)James, William
Philosophy
The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1 (of 2)
James, William
Psychology
[Illustration: FIG. 21.--Dog's motor centres, right hemisphere,
according to Paneth.--The points of the motor region are correlated as
follows with muscles: the _loops_ with the _orbicularis palpebrarum_;
the _plain crosses_ with the _flexor_, the _crosses inscribed in
circles_ with the _extensor, digitorum communis_ of the fore-paw;
the _plain circles_ with the _abductor pollicis longus_; the _double
crosses_ with the _extensor communis_ of the hind-limb.]
I am speaking now of localizations breadthwise over the brain-surface.
It is conceivable that there might be also localizations depthwise
through the cortex. The more superficial cells are smaller, the deepest
layer of them is large; and it has been suggested that the superficial
cells are sensorial, the deeper ones motor;[61] or that the superficial
ones in the motor region are correlated with the extremities of the
organs to be moved (fingers, etc.), the deeper ones with the more
central segments (wrist, elbow, etc.).[62] It need hardly be said that
all such theories are as yet but guesses.
We thus see that the postulate of Meynert and Jackson which we started
with on p. 30 is on the whole most satisfactorily corroborated by
subsequent objective research. _The highest centres do probably
contain nothing but arrangements for representing impressions and
movements, and other arrangements for coupling the activity Of these
arrangements together._[63] Currents pouring in from the sense-organs
first excite some arrangements, which in turn excite others, until
at last a motor discharge downwards of some sort occurs. When this is
once clearly grasped there remains little ground for keeping up that
old controversy about the motor zone, as to whether it is in reality
motor or sensitive. The whole cortex, inasmuch as currents run through
it, is both. All the currents probably have feelings going with them,
and sooner or later bring movements about. In one aspect, then,
every centre is afferent, in another efferent, even the motor cells
of the spinal cord having these two aspects inseparably conjoined.
Marique,[64] and Exner and Paneth[65] have shown that by cutting
_round_ a 'motor' centre and so separating it from the influence of
the rest of the cortex, the same disorders are produced as by cutting
it out, so that really it is only the mouth of the funnel, as it were,
through which the stream of innervation, starting from elsewhere,
pours;[66] consciousness accompanying the stream, and being mainly of
things seen if the stream is strongest occipitally, of things heard
if it is strongest temporally, of things felt, etc., if the stream
occupies most intensely the 'motor zone.' It seems to me that some
broad and vague formulation like this is as much as we can safely
venture on in the present state of science; and in subsequent chapters
I expect to give confirmatory reasons for my view.
MAN'S CONSCIOUSNESS LIMITED TO THE HEMISPHERES.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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