MECHANISM OF BRAIN.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 213, 9 September 1933, Page 11 (Supplement)

MECHANISM OF BRAIN.

NATURE'S MASTER INVENTION

20,000,000 YEAKS OP EVOLUTION. A PROFESSOR'S DESCRIPTION". The late James Arthur, of New Rochelle, N.Y., left £8000 to the American Museum of Natural History, the income of which sum was to bo expended for the study and investigation of the human brain and for the founding of a scries of annual lectures on the evolution of the brain. It fell to the lot of Professor C. Judson Herrick, of the University of Chicago, to deliver the lecture recently.

To Professor Hcrrick, as well as to any evolutionist, the brain is the master invention of nature. Here is a pulpy mass which weighs 48 ounces, more or less, and which is the most complicated single piece of mechanism in the world. "If all the apparatus of the telegraph, telephone and radio of the North American Continent could be squeezed into a half-gallon cuj) it would be lese intricate than* 5 the brain that fills your ekull," Dr. Herrick told his audience.

Just why the human brain ranks so high as a contrivance, Sir Arthur Keith once drove home by asking us to imagine what would bo required of an engineer who tried to eupply us with an. equivalent automaton. His first task would be to keep the human body upright. This he could probably do with a gyrostat. A. pair of cameras would be designed with lenses that could be adjusted to bring near or far objects into focus. The images would have,to fall on a film which presented a fresh surface every instant. Bundles of wires would transmit the images to a central office where they would be registered chemically. An Intricate Device.

Not only this, but the chemical records would have to be packed away so that they would become instantly available on demand when a past event was to be recalled or a decision made, especially when, for example, an automobile threatened to run one over. This in turn implies an executive service, which means eomo kind of engine to work our legs, arms and muscles in the right way and at the right time. As the engineer adds new contrivances in his effort to compete with the brain ho ultimately produces a mechanism which, ae Professor Herrick saj's, is much more intricate than any man has devised.

Much of this applies a 1.30 to the brains of the lower animals. A lion, even a fish, is a highly co-ordinated mechanism. What distinguishes man from other creatures is the psychic factor. So Professor Herrick dwelt heavily on ideas, ideals, aspirations and spiritual longings ''that arc our human birthright." The Brain of the Ape.

However close may be the physical resemblance of an anthropoid ape to man, his brain is but half as large as that of the most incompetent moron. Yet it is not size of brain alone that explains man's psychic powers. We have in fact, two brains. One of these is the stem. It is the older part and is not very different from the brains of very low animals. It governs primitive emotions and eucli reflex or instinctive actions as the winking of the eye and swallowing.

The apparatus of our psychological values, the mechanism whereby we do our thinking is the cerebral cortex, "that thin sheet of grey matter which covers tho convolutions of the cerebral hemispheres." It ie this wrapping , of the brain that counts. It represents the highest flight of nature's inventive genius. 'ilie capacity of an animal to learn depends on the extent and quality of the cortex. Without it we would have no knowledge of time and epace. Professor Herrick calls it "the organ of civilisation," a triumph of 20,000,000 years of evolutionary struggle.