FUNCTION OF VIBRISSAE IN BEHAVIOR OF WHITE RAT 75 



advance so that revived attitudes, renewed activities could func- 

 tion. The situation was upon them before they knew it and 

 they reacted immediately to the present stimulus. It was as 

 though the immediate potent stimulus destroyed, precluded, any 

 incipient emotional activities which may have been present. One 

 is reminded of the remarks often heard from those who have 

 been in some sudden accident or danger. When asked if they 

 were frightened they replied, "No, I had no time to be." 



The biological conception that the chief value of the distance 

 senses is to allow a preparatory interval for adjustment before 

 the final consummatory act is a familiar one. Physiologists 

 say that the reaction to contact stimulation is immediate and 

 that the response even though it involve a series of acts may 

 be regarded as consummatory. Psychologists recognize the 

 short reaction time for touch. Sanford says, "Touch, active and 

 passive together is pre-eminently the sense of closest motor 

 connection. This also has its important meaning in psycho- 

 logical life in general." " 



Sherrington elaborates the idea that contact stimulation 

 results in definite movements of particular members or parts 

 of an organism while to the stimulation affecting the distance 

 senses the organism reacts as a whole ^* and Head would explain 

 these two types of activity as arising from thalamic and cortical 

 influence respectively. 



The explanation of the emotional activity which it may be 

 conceived Head would offer is this; The thalamic response to 

 the stimulus at the plate would be an instinctive one, immediate 

 and direct. Such a response the blind animals exhibited. In 

 the normal animals, however, the cortical centers for vision 

 were in active function and discharging downward upon the 

 thalamus inhibited this instinctive thalamic response. During 

 this inhibition the affective and emotional tone which .is char- 

 acteristic of this level had time to develop and was finally re- 

 leased, as Dr. Herrick says, in a spasmodic reaction. Head 

 says, "All stimuli which appeal to the thalamic centers have a 

 high threshold. They must reach a high intensity before they 

 can enter consciousness, but once they have risen above the 



^* Sanford, E. C: The Function of the Several Senses in Mental Life, Am. Jour. 

 P.^ychoL, 1912, vol. 2:i, no. I. p. 60. 

 ^* Op. cit. p. 34.3 et seq. 



