NEURO-PHYSIOLOGY

Waikato Independent, Volume XLIV, Issue 107, 29 September 1947, Page 6

NEURO-PHYSIOLOGY

YEAR OF RESEARCH WORK AMERICAN DOCTOR'S VIEWS After a year spent on research into neurophysiology at the Otago Medical School, Dunedin, Dr Chandler McC. Brooks, of Baltimore, Maryland, United States, is visiting Christchurch on his way to Australia. Dr Brooks is accompanied by his wife, who 1 was formerly a primary school teacher ill the United States. Dr Brooks graduated Bachelor of Arts from Oberlin College, Ohio, and Ph.D. from the Princeton University, New Jersey. He was engaged in post-graduate study at the Havard Medical School before taking up an appointment in the • department of physialogy at the John Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and elected to undertake research in Dunedin with Dr J. C. Eccles, professor of physiology at the University of Otago. In an interview, Dr Brooks said he had been engaged in work on, the problems, of excitation and inhibition in the control of central nervous system activity. This involved a study of the mechanism whereby the reactions of the human body were

I controlled by the nervous system, and the links between the various nerves. Also under consideration were problems such as sleep and the repellative action of nerves. An attack had been made on the basic problem of the simplest way in which reflexes worked; for the biggest reactions of the body were built up by a complexity of. reflexes. In short, said Dr Brooks, an attempt had been made on the fundamental problem of how the nervous system worked normally. As a result of his research with Dr Eccles, continued Dr Brooks, they had published papers in the American Journal of Neuro-physiology and in an English journal, Nature. I The effects of anaesthesia and asphyxiation on the excitation of nerves had also been studied, an effort ■ had been made to discover where anaesthetics acted, and the theory had been propounded that an anaesthetic stabilised the membrane of a eurone so that it "fired" less readily. It was thought that anaesthetics acted on the motor side rather than the afferent side of the nervous system. Before his arrival in New Zealand, said Dr Brooks, Dr Eccles had worked out a theory of excitation in the control of the central nervous system, and since then they had also developed a theory of inhibition. These' theories were viewed as bases for experiments on other phenomena. Because of the importance of psychology, psychiatry and work on mental disorders, research on the central nervous sys•tem was of fundamental value. In attacking any disease, the clinician and the research worker started from opposite poles, but as their activities developed, they tended to coalesce. There were good 'research facilities for his particular studies in Dunedin, said Dr Brooks. Dr Eccles had cap- ' able assistants and good equipment, including modern cathode ray oscillographic recording devices. Dr Eccles and Dr Brooks will visit Canben*a to lecture at a seminar on neuro-physiology, beginning at Canberra on September Bth. Afterwards, Dr Brooks will visit all the main Australian cities to give post-graduate lectures on another field of his work —the function of the hypothalmus in the control of appetite, obesity, temperature regulation, water balance, and reproductive functions.