The name is absent

50 The Rice Institute Pamphlet

of work had been accomplished; at that time von Monakow
(1902) could review 846 references representing research
conducted to explore the significance of Fritsch & Hitzig’s
original experiment. As a result of this research, neurophysi-
ologists of 1900, as Konorski indicated, distinguished three
major kinds of cortical areas: (1) sensory areas, which were
connected by nerve fibers to the various sensory receptors in
the body; (2) motor areas, which were connected by nerve
fibers to the muscles; and (3) association areas, which did
not respond to stimulation and which were believed to con-
nect sensory with motor areas. The neurophysiological model
linking environment to behavior could accordingly be de-
scribed as follows : external physical stimuli impinging on the
sensory receptors set up nerve impulses which were trans-
mitted to sensory areas in the brain where they gave rise to
sensations and perceptual experiences; from those areas nerve
impulses passed through the association areas which were
considered responsible for intellectual and emotional activi-
ties; and from there the impulses passed on to the motor
areas with a resulting ennervation of muscle fibers and thus
movements of the body. The significance of this model for
the work of Pavlov, Watson, Hull, and others of the “Be-
haviorist school” of psychology is, of course, well known.
Such a model provides a mechanical conception of human
behavior with the brain as a kind of telephone switchboard
connecting stimuli with responses.

Research in neurophysiology since 1900 has made it in-
creasingly difficult to accept this simple interpretation of the
function of the central nervous system. In the following sec-
tions of this paper selected examples of this more recent re-
search will be described to indicate the kinds of neuro-
physiological data that contemporary psychology now has
available to aid in the development of ways of explaining and

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