This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Reply to article  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in this journal

RICHARD M. BRICKNER, M.D.; ALEC S. BARNUM

A.M.A. Arch Neurol Psychiatry. 1952;68(4):466-474.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

STUDIES on patients with lobectomies, lobotomies, and epilepsy have furnished new evidence that thought is the product of activation of a gigantic, but specific, group of neurones. As Cobb¹ has said recently: "There is no hint of any fundamental difference between the 'mental' and 'non-mental' functions of the central nervous system." Newly reported electrical stimulation of scarred temporal cortex by Penfield² has pinpointed the evidence.

Briefly, there exists a "neurointellectual" system which is comparable to the neuromotor and neurosensory systems. The essential difference in the systems lies only in their end-organs, and not in the basic behavior of the central nervous system. Except for the end-organs, and hence the mode of activation and of expression of the neural activity, the neurointellectual system behaves identically with the neuromotor and the neurosensory.

The neuromotor system has the muscles as end-organs. A muscle contraction is concrete, observable, and measurable, and the . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Author Affiliations
NEW YORK

From the Neurological Service of Dr. I. S. Wechsler, the Mount Sinai Hospital. (Dr. Barnum did his work on this paper independently of the Mount Sinai Hospital, with which he was not associated.)

Footnotes
This study was supported by the Fund for Research, Inc.