WHAT BRAINS ARE FOR

Greymouth Evening Star, 3 April 1929, Page 9

WHAT BRAINS ARE FOR

PROFESSOR’S INVESTIGATIONS

An exceedingly interesting contribution to the eternal problem, “What is the use of the brain?” is made to the January number of “Chambers’s Journal” by Professor George Forbes. It seems to him to be hardly credible that the brain, or any part of the body, can perform an act of thought. Yet it is clearly correct to say that reasoned or conscious thought depends on the brain. In what sense, then? he asks. That our natural instructive true thinking may be too comprehensivo in practice, and the brain is used as a valuable help for concentration upon reasoned thought much in the same way as pen, ink and paper may serve the purpose. For illustration he takes the case of a Judge making notes of evidence and a mathematician working out a piece of symbolic reasoning upon paper. The Judge might be able to form a sound .conclusion, even if his notes were destroyed. But often the mathematician would be unable to complete his reasoned argument if his symbolic writing was not available, any more than a man with a fractured skull and injured brain could carry on any kind of reasoned thought. “Perhaps we shall find, Professor Forbes says, “that tho brain which is made for a totally different purpose may be used to furnish symbols quite as effective as the written words, and almost as effective as the mathematician’s written equations.”

The operations both of our muscles and of our organs of sense, the two sole means of communication that, the mind of man or of any animal has with the outer world, are accompanied by a stimulation of nerve centres in the brain. We think in a certain way about our will to act, and simultaneously certain nerve centres in the brain are stimulated, and they set in action certain muscles. All these distinct thoughts, relatgd to the action of different nerve centres in the brain, are, ho suggests, used by us as symbols, or as letters of an alphabet, for making words and representing ideas, in a natural language. By using these symbols, instead of spoken or written words, we are enabled to conduct a course of reasoned thought. Words or other symbols are absolutely necessary for converting what may .be some of our instinctive subconscious vague thoughts or knowledge into rational thoughts that can be expressed to our selves or to others. “These are what we mean by reasoned thoughts,” he continues.’ “It is certain that if like an infant or a deaf mute we had no language, and if we felt the necessity for symbols, to reason with, we should almost inevitably choose those nerve centres in the brain that are continually in our thoughts. For they alone give us contact with the material world. Thus would thoughts of nerve centres become tlje alphabet for our natural reasonal language. This language would be used before we learned to speak and would always be used afterwards for thinking out an argument before expressing it in words.”

As an experiment to learn what kind of feeling or thinking goes with the working of a muscle he trained an unused muscle. He tried to raise the second toe of his foot without moving the others. In a week he was successful. This experiment was tried by others, and some interesting information is given.

Professor Forbes quotes from the late Dr. Francis Warner, senior physician at the London Hospital, that from the examination of a baby only three days old he could tell whether it would be of normal intellect or an imbecile. .A baby of that age when caught awake may be seen holding up its. hand and actuating such nerve centres as its brain contains to bend the fingers. Dr.

Warner found that if the baby’s body contained a good brain each finger was moved independently. If it had the brain of an imbecile it moved all the fingers together. The baby with a good brain has ten motor centres to act with. In the imbecile these are physically differentiated. The healthy baby has ten different bendings, accompanied by ten different kinds of thought. The article concludes with the writer’s conviction that the thoughts we use for working our muscles are the symbols we use in a language of reasoned thought prior to expression in words. ■*