Mental pathology in its relation to normal psychology : a course of lectures delivered in the University of Leipzig / by Gustav Störring ; translated by Thomas Loveday.

  • Störring, Gustav, 1860-
Date:
1907
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Mental pathology in its relation to normal psychology : a course of lectures delivered in the University of Leipzig / by Gustav Störring ; translated by Thomas Loveday. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    95/320 (page 79)
    (2) There is also a direct connexion between conceptual centre and the centre for articulatory motor images, for the derangement takes the form of paraphasia only, and not of total abolition of spontaneous speech. The only question remaining is how we are to conceive this co-operation of the auditory centre. The simplest hypothesis is that it receives an excitation from the conceptual centre and transmits it again to the motor centre, which will thus be stimu- lated from two directions—first from the conceptual centre direct, and secondly along the indirect path through the auditory centre. The co-operation of the auditory centre has, however, been conceived in another fashion. It seems possible in the abstract that the motor centre, being directly stimulated from the con- ceptual, should then itself excite the auditory centre, and that then the excitation of the auditory should in some way react upon the motor centre [B-M-A-M]. That this view is not really possible I shall show you by and by when I come to examine the conception of paraphasia ; and, taking it as rejected, we find it proved by pathological cases that the process of spon- taneous speech results from the co-operation of two causes, articu- latory motor images being aroused first by ideas of objects directly, and secondly by auditory images which have been themselves aroused by the said ideas of objects. We inferred a direct connexion between the centres for ideas of objects and the centre for articulatory images from the fact that lesion of the auditory image centre does not result in entire abolition of speech ; and our procedure may have to face the following objection. A verbal idea is admittedly composed of the auditory image of the word’s sound, the visual graphic image of its written or printed appearance,* the articulatory motor image, and the graphic motor image. Well, it may be said, if the auditory image centre is injured, and yet the power of speech is not entirely lost, perhaps the visual image or the graphic motor image serves as intermediary, being reproduced by the idea of an object and itself reviving the articulatory image. But in a large number of cases of cortical sensory aphasia we can elimi- nate the influence of these supposed connexions. Thus we can exclude graphic motor images because we find nothing more than * Literally, “the graphic image of the word.” In what follows the term “ graphic image” means a visual image, and so with “graphic image centre.”—Tr.