The nutritive acts take place in the inmost recesses of the tissues and organs. By what channels are they connected with the cortex, either when undergoing its influence or transmitting the echoes of their slackening, accelerative, and other modifications? On this point physiologists know little. According to some (Schiff, Brown-Séquard), there are relations between the digestive tube and the optic layer, the striated body, the cerebral peduncles; the psychic actions which modify respiration being transmitted through the third ventricle and the anterior corpora quadrigemina. The experiments of Pitres and François-Franck on the sensori-motor zone of the cortex show that excitement, at any given point, results in: augmentation, retardation, or even arrest of breathing; acceleration of the cardiac rhythm, and, if powerful, inhibition or even syncope; vaso-motor effects, a contraction or relaxation of the bladder; an influence on uterine contractions; on the secretion of the saliva and the pancreatic juice, and on trophic action in general. According to Goltz, the destruction of the anterior lobes produces atrophy, that of the posterior the contrary effect. These discrepancies and uncertainties are to us of small importance; but it remains certain that the nutritive functions especially depend on the pneumogastric and the great sympathetic nerves, that they are in some manner represented in the cerebral cortex and form the principal contents of cœnæsthesia. Though in the adult they play only a latent and intermittent part by reason of the preponderance of external sensations, images, and ideas, it is probable that in animals, particularly in voracious ones, the functions are inverted, and that cœnæsthesia, as a synthesis of the organic functions, passes to the front rank. This has even been asserted to be the case in children and savages, the argument being based on the fact that they have, in proportion, larger stomachs and longer intestines, and on various other characteristics.[128] However this may be, when deep-seated disturbances take place in the organism, cœnæsthesia is modified; which involves modification of the tendencies, and, consequently, of the position of pleasure and pain. Footnote 128: Brugia, _Patologia della cenestesia_ (1893).