CONSCIOUSNESS 221 



ral patterns set up in the brain cannot correspond, by 

 any sort of point-to-point correspondence, to either the 

 external objects of sense or the subjective figures of con- 

 sciousness. Nor is localization of neural activity in par- 

 ticular parts of the brain the secret of specific sensory 

 qualities: sensations as diverse as those of red, black, 

 green, and white— or, alternatively, of touch, cold, 

 warmth, movement, pain, posture, and pressure— may 

 arise during activation of the same cortical areas— the 

 visual areas, on the one hand, and those involved in 

 muscle sense, on the other. The explanation of sensory 

 form and quaUty must rather be sought in patterns of 

 activity involving large areas of the brain as a whole. 



When one perceives an object, one is thereby pre- 

 pared to respond with reference to it in some manner or 

 other— by pointing to it, by outlining it with a finger, by 

 relating its location in space relative to other objects, by 

 liking or disliking it; or, at the level of the white rat, by 

 avoiding or approaching it, by running under it or up 

 one edge, by leaping to a comer of it, by smelling or 

 biting it. 'Perceiving* and Tjeing-set-to-act' (or refusing 

 to act) are to be equated with each other. It does not 

 matter into what sensory areas of the cortex the percep- 

 tive pattern drifts; the preparation-to-respond remains 

 the same, and hence the meaning, the value, remains 

 the same. 



The trained student frequently, the layman generally, 

 assumes that the major function of the brain is to manu- 

 facture ideas, sensations, images, feelings, to store mem- 

 ories, and the like. On the contrary, Sperry sees these 

 phenomena as by-products: the immediate purpose of 

 brain function is to transform sensory patterns into pat- 

 terns of motor activity, and on close analysis the sensory 

 pattern proves basically to be but a means to the end of 

 motor co-ordination, in that it allows some additional 

 refinement, such as the appreciation of past experiences 

 or of future goals, to be brought into behavior, thereby 

 increasing over-all adaptiveness. 



