1 7^8 



HANDBOOK OF PHYSIOLOGY 



NEUROPHYSIOLOGY III 



Investigation. This should not be taken to mean that 

 both are equally suitable for such study. Man obvi- 

 ously holds an advantage over animals insofar as he is 

 able through verbal behavior to communicate a 

 greater amount of psychological information. 



BEHAVIOR AND COMMUNICATION OF INFORMATION. It is 



implicit in what has just been said that behavior pro- 

 vides a physical correlate of the amount of information 

 in a system. But it remains to be stated what is meant 

 by 'behavior' and 'amount of information.' Behavior 

 may be broadly defined as any change of an entity 

 with respect to its environment. Starting from there, 

 one can proceed, as Rosenblueth it al. (57) have done, 

 to subdivide various forms of behavior into a hier- 

 archical system. The more orderly a form of behavior, 

 the greater is its potentiality to convey a greater 

 amount of information, i.e. a greater amount of 

 orderliness. 



As McCulloch (47) has pointed out, when informa- 

 tion is communicated by some form of behavior there 

 may result a loss of information. He refers to this loss 

 as 'corruption' and defines it as the ratio of informa- 

 tion in the input of a system to that in its output. This 

 factor of corruption, or degradation as it might be 

 called, has very important implications in the field of 

 psychosomatic research. The corruption that occurs 

 in the communication of psychological information 

 through the interofective systems is far in excess of 

 that obtaining to the exterofective systems. In other 

 words, the information that one derives from observing 

 and recording the activity of organs, bioelectrical 

 fluctuations of nerve and other tissue, variations in 

 endocrine levels, etc., does not begin to approach 

 what is gained from the external manifestations of an 

 organism's behavior. For this reason, it becomes of the 

 utmost significance in psychosomatic investigation 10 

 demonstrate whenever possible a simultaneous cor- 

 relation between internal and external manifestations 

 of behavior. In dealing with the overl behavioral 

 manifestations of an animal, one is largel) confined 

 to observing its vocal, facial and bodily expressions 

 under natural or imposed situations, and to recording 

 its performance ol a v.nietv of psychological tests. In 

 the ease of man, there is the advantage that, over and 

 above these things, one has recourse to communica- 

 tion through language. Developments in the field of 



psychiatry have great!) extended the amount of in- 

 formation thai may be obtained from man's verbal 

 behavior, as well as his externally manifest nonverbal 



I ieh.iv iol . 



kinds of psychological information. Finally, these 

 remarks must make an extension of what was said in 

 the introduction about "kinds' of psychological in- 

 formation. This will require a reliance on what can be 

 reasoned and inferred on the basis of introspective 

 material. Such material may be said to give the 

 greatest amount of information about the psyche. 

 When it is evident from behavioral manifestations 

 that an organism is in a wakeful, responsive con- 

 dition, it may be inferred that a state of 'awareness' or 

 'consciousness' exists. Awareness might be said to be 

 the lowest order of subjectively appreciated informa- 

 tion. Superimposed on a state of awareness are the 

 various modalities of sensation which become in- 

 creasingly informative as they are modified by the 

 attributes of quality and intensity and are appreciated 

 in terms of time and space. Dependent on this sub- 

 jective reservoir are two higher orders of information 

 that are denoted respectively as emotional and 

 ideational in kind. 



Information that is ideational in kind may be de- 

 rived without an intrusive awareness of feelings.' It 

 lends itself to communication by symbolic representa- 

 tions that virtually may be linked together in infinite 

 combinations. Information of an emotional kind, on 

 the contrary, manifests itself as distinctive feeling 

 states that give the impression of pervading the body 

 and have the peculiarity of being imbued either with 

 the quality of pleasantness or unpleasantness. Such a 

 verbal description obviously cannot begin to com ev 

 what emotional feelings arc. Most forms of other 

 sensation can be reproduced lor another indiv idual I >v 

 administering the proper stimulus to his appropriate 

 receptor apparatus, but emotions have no specific 

 gateway to the sensorium. This partially explains the 

 ureal 'corruption' that occurs when emotion is com- 

 municated from one individual to another and the 

 predicament of anyone who tries to define the sub- 

 jective nature of emotion. As an emotion can be com- 

 pared only to itself, one can com ev its subjective 

 nature to another individual only by denoting the 

 conditions under which it occurs. Fortunately, the be- 

 havioral correlates of emotion are sufficiently lew and 

 stereotyped as to make this relativelv casv to do by 

 word or act. 



kinds OF 1 vm 1 h i\ VI INFORMATION. Unlike ideas, onlv 

 a limited number ol emotions have been identified. 

 All the recognized emotions mav be considered from 



the standpoint of self-preservation and the preserva- 

 tion ol the species, Emotions thai are informative in 



