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Consciousness and the Highest Cerebral Centres, with Remarks on the Penfield-Walshe Controversy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 February 2018

Max Levin
Max Levin*
Affiliation:
From the Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery, the New York Medical College, Flower and Fifth Avenue Hospitals, New York, N. Y.
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Extract

In deep coma the patient usually lies still, without moving. Why doesn't he move? Many will answer, “Because he is unconscious”. This is on the assumption, which seems eminently reasonable, that motor centres are under the control of a higher centre for mind. On voluntary movement, according to this assumption, motor centres receive and obey impulses from the psychic centre. When the psychic centre is paralysed, as in coma, the motor centres lie idle, like men in a factory marking time because the foreman is away and there is no one to tell them what to do.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Journal of Mental Science , Volume 106 , Issue 445 , October 1960 , pp. 1398 - 1404
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1960 

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References

1 Ferrier, D., The Localisation of Cerebral Disease, 1878. London: Smith, Elder ' Co. p. 2.Google Scholar
2 Hebb, D. O., in Brain Mechanisms and Consciousness, 1954. Springfield, Illinois: Charles C. Thomas. p. 307.Google Scholar
3 Hunter, J., and Jasper, H. H., “Effects of Thalamic Stimulation in Unanaesthetised Animals”, Electroenceph. Clin. Neurophysiol., 1949, 1, 305.Google Scholar
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5 Levin, M., “Reflex Action in the Highest Cerebral Centres: a Tribute to Hughlings Jackson”, J. Nerv. Ment. Dis., 1953, 118, 481.Google Scholar
6 Penfield, W., “Mechanisms of Voluntary Movement”, Brain, 1954, 77, 1.Google Scholar
7 Idem , “Centrencephalic Integrating System”, ibid., 1958, 81, 231.Google Scholar
8 Walshe, Francis Sir, “The Brain-stem Conceived as the ‘Highest Level’ of Function in the Nervous System; with Particular Reference to the ‘Automatic Apparatus’ of Carpenter (1850) and to the ‘Centrencephalic Integrating System’ of Penfield”, ibid., 1957, 80, 510.Google Scholar
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