scholarly journals The method of meningostomy and its application in the study of the brain in animals

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (8) ◽  
pp. 820-821
Author(s):  
A. I. Smirnov ◽  
P. D. Olefirenko

All surgical methods used in the study of the brain in animals can be combined into two groups: 1) methods of direct and indirect shutdown of a particular part of the brain and 2) methods of non-mediocre brain stimulation by electric current or by mechanical, chemical or thermal effects. In the hands of different experimenters, depending on the goals and objects of research, these basic methods varied to one degree or another. All modifications were aimed at, on the one hand, to avoid brain injuries during trepanation as much as possible, and on the other hand, to gain access to the cerebral cortex without exposing it at the time of the observation itself. As can be judged from the literature collected from E. Abderhalden in Handbuch der biolog. Arbeitsmethoden to a certain extent this has already been achieved.

2016 ◽  
Vol 74 (8) ◽  
pp. 632-637 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vernon Furtado da Silva ◽  
Mauricio Rocha Calomeni ◽  
Rodolfo Alkmim Moreira Nunes ◽  
Carlos Elias Pimentel ◽  
Gabriela Paes Martins ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT This study focused upon the functional capacity of mirror neurons in autistic children. 30 individuals, 10 carriers of the autistic syndrome (GCA), 10 with intellectual impairments (GDI), and 10 non-autistics (GCN) had registered eletroencephalogram from the brain area theoretically related to mirror neurons. Data collection procedure occurred prior to brain stimulation and after the stimulation session. During the second session, participants had to alternately process figures evoking neutral, happy, and/or sorrowful feelings. Results proved that, for all groups, the stimulation process in fact produced additional activation in the neural area under study. The level of activation was related to the format of emotional stimuli and the likelihood of boosting such stimuli. Since the increase of activation occurred in a model similar to the one observed for the control group, we may suggest that the difficulty people with autism have at expressing emotions is not due to nonexistence of mirror neurons.


1927 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 425-429
Author(s):  
N. S. Utochnikova

The treatment of inflammatory diseases of the female genitalia has long been one of the most important tasks of the gynecologist. With the development of surgery, surgical methods of treatment began to be applied: exudates were removed, the uterus and inflamed appendages were extirpated, etc.; but the danger of surgical intervention on the one hand, and on the other - the severe consequences of removal of organs such as ovaries, especially in young women - forced gynecologists to spend much effort in discovering and improving non-operative methods of treatment of inflammatory diseases of the female genital parts. Among these methods, physical methods such as water, mud, light baths, massage, etc., as well as those related to electricity have long been prominent.


2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 349-377
Author(s):  
Leonardo Niro Nascimento

This article first aims to demonstrate the different ways the work of the English neurologist John Hughlings Jackson influenced Freud. It argues that these can be summarized in six points. It is further argued that the framework proposed by Jackson continued to be pursued by twentieth-century neuroscientists such as Papez, MacLean and Panksepp in terms of tripartite hierarchical evolutionary models. Finally, the account presented here aims to shed light on the analogies encountered by psychodynamically oriented neuroscientists, between contemporary accounts of the anatomy and physiology of the nervous system on the one hand, and Freudian models of the mind on the other. These parallels, I will suggest, are not coincidental. They have a historical underpinning, as both accounts most likely originate from a common source: John Hughlings Jackson's tripartite evolutionary hierarchical view of the brain.


1979 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 7-14
Author(s):  
Harry G. Johnson

The concept of “brain drain” is in its origins a nationalistic concept, by which is meant a concept that visualizes economic and cultural welfare in terms of the welfare of the residents of a national state or region, viewed as a totality, and excludes from consideration both the welfare of people born in that region who choose to leave it, and the welfare of the outside world in general. Moreover, though the available statistics are far from adequate on this point, there is generally assumed to be a net flow of trained professional people from the former colonial territories to the ex-imperial European nations, and from Europe and elsewhere to North America and particularly the United States. The concept thus lends itself easily to the expression of anti-colonial sentiments on the one hand, and anti-American sentiments on the other. The expression of such sentiments can be dignified by the presentation of brain drain as a serious economic and cultural problem, by relying on nationalistic sentiments and assumptions and ignoring the principles of economics—especially the principle that in every transaction there is both a demand and a supply—or by elevating certain theoretical economic possibilities into presumed hard facts.


Politeia ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 238-260
Author(s):  
Franco Manni ◽  

From the ideas of Aristotle, De Saussure and Wittgenstein, philosopher Herbert McCabe elaborated an original anthropology. 'Meaning' means: the role played by a part towards the whole. Senses are bodily organs and sensations allow an animal to get fragments of the external world which become 'meaningful' for the behaviour of the whole animal Besides sensations, humans are ‘linguistic animals’ because through words they are able to 'communicate', that is, to share a peculiar kind of meanings: concepts. Whereas, sense-images are stored physically in our brain and cannot be shared, even though we can relate to sense-images by words (speech coincides with thought). However, concepts do not belong to the individual human being qua individual, but to an interpersonal entity: the language system. Therefore, on the one hand, to store images is a sense-power and an operation of the brain, whereas the brain (quite paradoxically!) is not in itself the organ of thought. On the other hand, concepts do not exist on their own.


When free magnetism is developed by induction, and is not retained in that state by what has been termed the coercive force of hard steel, it has generally been considered that all the phenomena due to the existence of free magnetism cease on the removal of the inducing cause. The object of the present communication is to show that such is not the fact. From a variety of experiments described by the author, it appears that soft iron continued to exhibit strongly the attraction due to the developement of magnetism long after the means by which the magnetism had been originally excited had ceased to act. In these experiments, bars of soft iron, in the form of a horseshoe, had a single helix of copper wire wound round them, so that on the ends of the wire being brought into contact with the poles of a voltaic battery, the iron became an electromagnet. With one of these horse-shoes, while the connexion between the ends of the helix and the poles of the battery existed, the soft iron, having a keeper applied to its poles, supported 125 pounds it supported 56 pounds after that connexion had been broken, and continued to retain the power of supporting the same weight after an interval of several days, care having been taken not to disturb, during the time, the contact between the horse-shoe and its keeper. On this contact, however, being broken, nearly the whole attractive power appeared to be immediately lost. The author describes several instances of the same kind, particularly one in which the contact between the ends of the horse-shoe of soft iron and its keeper having been undisturbed during fifteen weeks, the attractive power continued undiminished. Although the interposition of a substance, such as mica or paper, between the ends of the horse-shoe and its keeper necessarily diminished the force of attraction, it did not appear to diminish the power of retaining that force. In a case where the electromagnet of soft iron and its keeper were equal semi-circles, the author found, what may appear singular, that the arrangement of the magnetism during the time that the electric current traversed the helix, appeared not to be the same as after the cessation of that current; in the one case similar, and in the other dissimilar, poles being opposed to each other at the opposite extremities of the two semi-circles. Whether the magnetism was originally developed in the soft iron by means of an electric current passing round it, or by passing over its surface the poles of an electromagnet, or those of a common magnet of hard steel, it appeared to possess the same power of retaining a large portion of the magnetism thus developed. The retention of the magnetism does not appear to depend upon the relative positions of the ends of the horse-shoe and the keeper remaining undisturbed, but on their contact remaining unbroken: for one keeper was substituted for another without diminution of this power; care being taken that the second should be in good contact with both ends of the horse-shoe before the complete removal of the first.


1897 ◽  
Vol 60 (359-367) ◽  
pp. 199-201

The research was undertaken in the hope of obtaining evidence in support of or against the view that the cerebellum exercises a direct influence on the spinal centres, as opposed to any indirect influence exerted through the agency of the cerebral cortex. The inferior peduncle of the cerebellum was accordingly divided on one side, the organ itself and its other peduncles being otherwise left intact, and the results obtained by this procedure were controlled by experiments in which the lateral tracts of the medulla oblongata were divided on one side without injury to the pyramid on the one hand or to the posterior columns and their nuclei on the other. Further control experiments consisted in dividing transversely the posterior columns and their nuclei a few millimetres above the calamus scriptorius, on one side, without including the lateral tracts of the medulla in the lesion.


Author(s):  
George Graham

The basic claims of the chapter are, first, that mental disorders are not best understood as types of brain disorder, even though mental disorders are based in the brain. And, second, that the difference between the two sorts of disorders can be illuminated by the sorts of treatment or therapy that may work for the one type (a mental disorder) but not for the other type (a brain disorder). In the discussion some of the diagnostic implications and difficulties associated with these two basic claims are outlined.


I have in a previous paper described investigation on the conduction of excitation in Mimosa pudica . It was there shown that the various characteristics of the propagation of excitation in the conducting tissue of the plant are in every way similar to those in the animal nerve. Hence it appeared probable that any newly found phenomenon in the one case was likely to lead to the discovery of a similar phenomenon in the other. A problem of great interest which has attracted my attention my attention for several years is the question whether, in a conducting tissue, excitation travels better with or against the direction of an electric current. The experimental difficulties presented in the prosecution of this enquiry are very numerous, the results being complicated by the joint effects of the direction of current on conductivity and of the poles on excitability. As regards the latter, the changes of excitability in the animal nerve under electrotonus have been demonstrated by the well-known experiments of pflüger. In a nerve-and-muscle preparation, the presence of a pole P is shown to induce a variation of excitability of a neighbouring point S. When P is kathode, the excitability of the point S, near it, is enhanced; stimulation of S, previously ineffective, now becomes effective, and the resulting excitation is transmitted to M, causing response of the muscle. Conversely, the application of anode at P causes a depression of excitability of S. Stimulus previously effective now becomes ineffective. In this manner the transmission of excitation may be indirectly modified by the polar variation of excitability of the stimulated point (fig. 1 a ).


2005 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 219-240 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. MARK SMITH

From the late thirteenth to the early seventeenth century, the process of visual imaging was understood in the Latin West as an essentially subjective act initiated by the eye and completed by the brain. The crystalline lens took center stage in this act, its role determined by its peculiar physical and sensitive capacities. As a physical body, on the one hand, it was disposed to accept the physical impressions of light and color radiating to it from external objects. As a sensitive body, on the other hand, it was enabled by the visual spirit flowing to it from the brain to feel those impressions visually. Acting as a sentient selector of visual information, the lens transformed the brute physical impressions of light and color into visual impressions. These, in turn, gave rise to perceptual “depictions” that were passed back along the stream of visual spirits to the brain. Known in Scholastic parlance as “intentional species,” these depictions served as virtual representations of their generating objects. As such, they provided the wherewithal not only for perception, but also for conception and cognition.


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