Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/245

Rh impossible. If the anterior cerebral arteries, for example, have their supply augmented, then to an exactly corresponding extent a lessened amount can be present in the other encephalic vessels.

In the second, place, no change can occur in its circulation without a change in the balance of active pressure through the brain. The stress through the whole cranial cavity must, of course, be equalized, from the amount of fluids present, but the displacement of solid particles must occur, and. such displacement is not likely to be without physiological significance.

Assuming the approximate soundness of these principles, we have to consider how they may be applied in encephalic physiology. My immediate object will be to show that they must be of essential importance in any study of the correlations of mind and brain.

The first subjective condition or faculty I have to notice on its somatic side is attention. It is unnecessary to enlarge on the psychological importance of this function. It may be said to underlie every other mental faculty. It is the bringing of the consciousness to a focus in some special direction. It is required to convert sensation into that comprehensive grasp of particulars which constitutes perception; without it, meaningless reverie will take the place of coherent thought; nor can we conceive of any act being strictly voluntary apart from its guidance.

To study it in its physiological relation, we may for convenience take the well-known effect of attention in modifying the intensity of sensation. The mental effect produced by an impression on a sensory surface is stronger, and details about the impressing cause are more completely gathered in, when the mind is concentrated on it. On the other hand, if the consciousness is engrossed in some other direction if absorbed by an interesting occupation or train of thought—the impression which formerly produced so much effect is felt obscurely or not at all. To account for this difference we can not be content with a merely metaphysical explanation. To say that the mind is so constituted that it can not at one and the same moment entertain with equal distinctness dissociated ideas, is only one half of the truth. There must be a cerebral correlative, and some notion as to the nature of this must be got if we are to come nearer the whole truth.

Two factors, at least, may be specified as bearing on this problem. In the first place, when the consciousness is engrossed by an immediate sensation, the sphere of encephalic activity is comparatively restricted. What that sphere may be in any particular instance it is for anatomy and experiment to determine. For receiving the impression, for quickening the consciousness, and for completing its course as a definite perception, the track involved may be wide and branching, but it does not include the whole brain.

In the second place, the encephalic circulation will be focused in