Conditioned reflexes: An investigation of the physiological activity of the cerebral cortex

In the present lecture we shall discuss further experiments and observations upon the pathological states of the cerebral cortex. The inquiry is one of particular interest, not only on account of the special attention devoted to this subject at the present time, but also on account of several fortuitous occurrences. It has become possible to trace how, as a result of different injurious influences, the activity of the cortex gradually and by scarcely noticeable stages deviates from normal and becomes pathological; often also the pathological states can be made use of for inquiry into nervous processes taking place under purely physiological conditions, since under pathological conditions different aspects of the nervous processes which are screened off from us by the unified and balanced complexity of the normal physiological state become dissociated or accentuated. In the lecture upon the hypnotic states occurring under normal conditions it was mentioned that the most interesting of these were subjected to experimental investigation only after they had previously been observed in exaggerated form in a pathological case.