68 The Rice Institute Pamphlet
1886 so that Ferrier could report that “animals deprived of
their cerebral hemispheres are still capable of exhibiting, in
response to various forms of sensory stimulation special and
general, reactions, more or less complex, which do not at all
differ in character from those which we associate with feel-
ing or emotion” (Ferrier, 1886, p. 146). He felt the evidence
was sufficient to justify concluding that “the centres of emo-
tional expression are therefore situated below the centres of
conscious activity and ideation” (p. 147) which he considered
to be located in the cerebral cortex. Ferrier did not specify
clearly how he thought cortical mechanisms might be related
to emotional expression. However, since emotions did affect
states of consciousness, which for Ferrier were cortically de-
termined, he felt that the activity of the centers of emotional
expression must be represented in some form in the cortex.
Sherrington (1906) was more specific about his conception
of the relations between the cerebral cortex and emotional
processes. His studies of animals whose cerebral hemispheres
had been removed led him to consider their emotional be-
havior as “pseudaffective,” “mimetic movements simulating
expression of certain affective states” (p. 251), but actually
quite different from such states in the normal animal. In con-
trast to James and Lange who believed that emotions were
reactions to visceral stimulation, Sherrington, representing
the dominant tradition in neurophysiology at that time, ar-
gued that, although subcortical mechanisms were definitely
involved, the initiation and maintenance of real (not “pseud-
affective”) emotional reactions were determined primarily
by the cerebral hemispheres.
The identification of the frontal lobes as the areas of the
cortex related to the emotions was suggested in early re-
search by Bianchi (1895) and others, but the conception of
the relationship was not clearly stated at that time. Bianchi