The Brain and Behavior 49
their experiments which provided a new direction for re-
search has been described by Konorski (1958) as follows:
“From that time onwards, in almost all countries, but espe-
cially in Gennany and England, various fields of the cortex
were intensively explored with the aid of two methods: stim-
ulation of various points of the exposed cortex in an anaes-
thetized animal, and testing of the results of ablation of par-
ticular areas after the animal has awakened from anaesthesia.
The investigations were so numerous and rich in results that
by the turn of the century, the chart of the function of the
cortex of animals (rabbits, cats, dogs, monkeys and apes) was
essentially completed, and, what is more surprising, it has
proved to be not very different from that worked out more
recently with the aid of infinitely more perfect methods. The
investigations demonstrated that the cortex comprises the
so-called projective (sensory) areas representing a cortical
counterpart of particular receptor surfaces, the motor area,
involved in voluntary movements of particular parts of the
body, and areas of undefined function, which expand with
the phylogenetic development of the brain and which were
most frequently referred to as associative areas. As a rule,
the results of the investigations were in conformity with the
results of respective histological studies.
“However, it is interesting to note that after this general
scientific assault, when all the positions susceptible to con-
quest with the aid of the methods then available had been
tackled, development along this line suddenly came to an
end. It seemed that after the functional topography of the
cerebral cortex had been mapped out, there was nothing
more left to be done in the physiology of the brain” (Konor-
ski, 1958, pp. 1102-1103).
Konorskfs remarks characterize the situation in neuro-
physiology at the turn of the century. An impressive amount