TRENDS AND NEEDS IN NEUROANATOMY 



By Sam L. Clark 

 Vanderbilt Medical School, VanderbiU University 



William Harvey in the dedication of his 

 Anatomical Studies on the Motion of the 

 Heart and Blood declared "many . . . main- 

 tain that all we know is still infinitely less 

 than all that still remains unknown." 

 Through the more than three hundred 

 years since this statement was made much 

 has been learned but the statement remains 

 essentially true. To attempt therefore to 

 point out the direction research should take 

 to fill the gaps in knowledge of the nervous 

 system from the neuroanatomical viewpoint 

 is a formidable if not a presumptions task, 

 and provokes sympathetic understanding 

 of the dilemma of the poet viewing the 

 "flower in the crannied wall." 



Significant to the problem of what is 

 and is not known in neuroanatomy is the 

 question of who is contributing to the field. 

 Neuroanatomy as a course is taught for the 

 most part in medical school, but not all 

 who teach it are involved in investigation 

 of the nervous system. Among the mem- 

 bers of the American Association of Ana- 

 tomists there are very few more neuroana- 

 tomists than there are medical schools in 

 the country; those contributing to neuroan- 

 atomical knowledge, however, include 

 many who are physiologists, zoologists, 

 psychologists, pathologists, neurosurgeons 

 and others less obviously related to the 

 field. The overlapping is unavoidable and 

 fortunate since these various workers have 

 brought to bear on the nervous system 

 a wide range of interests and have pointed 

 out morphological details with tools that 

 range from a stick whittled out of orange 

 wood to the inertialess beam of the cath- 

 ode-ray oscilloscope. It is difficult for the 

 individual specialists to stick to their fields, 

 for the form and function of the nervous 

 system are so intricately bound together 

 that the investigator of fvmction finds it 

 necessary to unravel details of morphology; 



and the anatomically minded student must 

 of necessity consider physiology. From 

 the way the nervous system is constructed 

 for conduction it is frequently possible to 

 interpret the function of a pathway or 

 "center" by determining its connections. 



TERMINOLOGY 



In any field the ability of workers to 

 communicate with each other is constantU' 

 dependent upon the speech they employ, 

 and each group has, as it were, its own 

 vernacular or terminology. Such terminol- 

 ogy is not static but changes with develop- 

 ments of knowledge. A serious need in 

 neuroanatomy, and no doubt in other neu- 

 robiological fields also, is an active com- 

 mission or some other suitable method 

 for selection or acceptance of what appears 

 to be the best terminology. The current 

 activity of the International Committee on 

 Anatomical Nomenclature promises help 

 in this direction. 



Historically, problems of form and func- 

 tion of the nervous system have been in- 

 vestigated together (giving unintended 

 strength to such unscientific offshoots as 

 phrenology) and a nomenclature de- 

 veloped emphasizing this. But due to the 

 slowness with which complete and accurate 

 knowledge accumulates, conflicts were cre- 

 ated and the terminology adopted often 

 implied functional relationships not sup- 

 ported by subsequent investigation. We 

 have become accustomed to such discrep- 

 ancies and ignore the original significance 

 of some terms, as: pituitary gland, optic 

 thalamus; but we are more or less uncon- 

 sciously restricted by others, as, for ex- 

 ample: motor area, respiratory center. An 

 example of the importance of proper term- 

 inology for understanding is found in 

 names of parts related to visceral inner- 

 vation. That word of good character when 



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