Abstract
In his presidential address before the Linnean Society of New South Wales on March 28, Prof. A. N, Burkitt outlined progress in our knowledge of the structure and workings of the brain. The present lopsidedness of our knowledge, so amazing in the physical and chemical world and so backward as regards the very instrument which has created human civilisation, is the cause of much of the discontent and difficulties of our present age. Recent work upon the sense organs and the impulses they transmit to the brain, and some idea of how closely parallel to the physical reality these impulses may be, was discussed, partly in relation to philosophical problems. The bearing of the evolution of the sense organs upon the evolution of the brain, so ably outlined by Elliot Smith, was briefly mentioned. The importance of the recent discovery that the emotional aspect of life is associated with the activity of a special part of the brain, the thalamus, distinct and separate from the great thinking and discriminatory apparatus, the cerebral cortex, was emphasised, and suggestions were made as to the possible bearing of this knowledge upon the Freudian hypothesis. Finally, an attempt was made to suggest some inkling of the physiological phenomena that occur in the brain during conscious thinking in all its myriad aspects; also the mechanisms concerned in expression and the control of muscles, together with the evolution of these controlling mechanisms and muscles, were briefly outlined.
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Some Aspects of the Vertebrate Brain. Nature 133, 943 (1934). https://doi.org/10.1038/133943b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/133943b0