_Results_--_Localization of Brain Functions._--The more detailed
results of this sort of study, when considered on the side of the
nervous organism, may be thrown together under the general head of
Localization. The greatest result of all is just the discovery that
there is such a thing as localization in the nervous system of the
different mental functions of sensation and movement. We find
particular parts of the nervous organism contributing each its share,
in a more or less independent way, to the whole flow of the mental
life; and in cases of injury or removal of this part or that, there
is a corresponding impairment of the mind.
First of all, it is found that the nervous system has a certain
up-and-down arrangement from the segments of the spinal cord up to the
gray matter of the rind or "cortex" of the large masses or hemispheres
in the skull, to which the word brain is popularly applied. This
up-and-down arrangement shows three so-called "levels" of function.
Beginning with the spinal cord, we find the simplest processes, and
they grow more complex as we go up toward the brain.
The lowest, or "third level," includes all the functions which the
spinal cord, and its upper termination, called the "medulla," are able
to perform alone--that is, without involving necessarily the activity
of the nervous centres and brain areas which lie above them. Such
"third-level" functions are those of the life-sustaining processes
generally: breathing, heart-beat, vasomotor action (securing the
circulation of the blood), etc. These are all called Automatic
processes. They go regularly on from day to day, being constantly
stimulated by the normal changes in the physiological system itself,
and having no need of interference from the mind of the individual.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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