The Root of Thought Read Online Free PDF

with Volta claims and Matteucci’s flip-flop as evidence for electrical falsity. But du Bois-Reymond portrayed their thinking as moronic. He called vitalism pernicious and went so far as to say, “In one word, the so-called vitalism, of the type as it is currently presumed to be present in all points of the living body, is nonsense.” He had no place in his heart for detractors and mercilessly lambasted Matteucci, the man whose research got him his start, to a side note in nervous-system history.
    This problem of slower electrical conduction was not resolved until chemists understood that electrolyte solutions conducted electricity at slower rates. The electrical potential in nerves is now understood to be a difference between potassium and sodium ions. Sodium ions outside the cell and potassium ions inside create an electrical potential based on ionic charge difference.
    As du Bois-Reymond perpetuated the idea of electrical conductance in the fiber, Remak’s studies showed the neuron is where the fiber originates. Finally, to open the way for the electrical neuron to gain its level ofimportance in the notion of our thoughts, and continuing with the belief that thoughts originate in the cerebral cortex of our brains, in 1870, the first demonstration of cortical function was achieved by Gustav Fritsch (1837–1927) and Eduard Hitzig (1838–1907). Dog cortices stimulated by electricity showed that motor control originated from the grey matter. They removed the skull and applied an electrical current through flat electrodes that would not damage the cortex. They noticed that movement occurred on the opposite side of the body from where they stimulated the cortex. They also showed that different parts of the cortex were responsible for different types of body movements. If they stimulated in one area, the dog would extend its leg; stimulation in another area resulted in the dog contracting its leg.
    The backlash to their published work was immediate. Every eminent physiologist of the day called the experiments false and fabricated because they contradicted the prevailing edict that deep brain centers initiated movement. However, just as Galvani’s experiments were replicated easily by other experimenters, so were Fritsch and Hitzig’s. Cortical control of movement was soon noticed in the monkey as well.
    Five years later, Richard Caton (1842–1926) came along and discovered changes in electrical activity while recording different areas of the cortex after stimulating the eyes and rotating the heads of monkeys and rabbits. Sensory nerves carried electrical impulses in the same manner as the motor nerves that cause muscular contractions.
    Then Ramón y Cajal combined everyone’s work and developed his palpable Neuron Doctrine. All our experiences, imagination, creativity, and memory reside in these beautiful cells, with their dendritic trees sticking out the top like poofs of scraggly hair, their triangular-shaped cell bodies as uniform as a doll’s face, with their elegant transmitting axons each extending electrically out like the torso of a lover.
    The tricky little problem was the glial cell. Cajal’s acceptance of Pedro’s theory that glia exist to buffer the electrical firing in neuronal communication came before it was understood that almost all cells have an electrical potential and gradient.
    The electrical revolution ended 100 years after Galvani’s work. The foundation was set for studies on the root of thought. As Walt Whitman asked, “And if the body were not the Soul, what is the Soul?”
    But Fritsch and Hitzig’s studies showed only a simple movement, and all electrical stimulation studies of neurons since have focused on reflexesand stimulation of base desires. Ablation studies and examining the consequences of injuries allowed researchers to understand what cortical area was responsible for speech (left temporal cortex), hearing (temporal), and vision (occipital). What about the cells in the