ORGANIZATION OF HUMAN BRAIN — PENFIELD 437 



A young woman heard music when a certain point in the superior 

 surface of the temporal cortex was stimulated. She said she heard 

 an orchestra playing a song. The same song was forced into her con- 

 sciousness over and over again by restimulation at tlie same spot. It 

 progressed from verse to chorus at what must have been the tempo 

 of the orchestra when she had heard it playing thus. She was quite 

 sure each time that someone had turned on a gramophone in the operat- 

 ing room. 



A South African who was being operated upon cried out in great 

 surprise that he heard his cousins talking, and he explained that he 

 seemed to be there laughing with them although he knew he was really 

 in the operating room in Montreal. 



There were many other examples of hearing music but always the 

 patient heard a singing voice, or a piano, or an organ, or an orchestra, 

 and sometimes he seemed to l3e present in the room or in church where 

 he had heard it. What he heard and experienced was a single occa- 

 sion recalled to him with a vividness that was much greater than any- 

 tliing he could summon voluntarily by effort of his will. 



If the individual was asked later to recall the song he might be 

 able to sing it, but he might not be able to recall the circumstances of 

 any one previous hearing. His later memory of the song was a 

 generalization. On the other hand, the electrode had reproduced 

 for him one single previous experience when he had heard the music 

 and it awakened in him the emotion which that particular situation 

 had originally roused in him. 



In summary it may be said that the electrode, applied to the tem- 

 poral cortex, recalls specific occasions or events so that the individual 

 is made aware of everything to which he was paying attention during 

 a specific interval of time. Such responses have followed stimulation 

 only in cases in which the cortex had been the site of previous habitual 

 epileptic discharges. Although the content of the recollection thus 

 evoked often bears no relationship to the psychical content of the 

 seizure, it is possible that the cortex has been rendered more readily 

 stimulable by the epileptic state. 



These results were obtained in the temporal cortex only (fig. 2, 

 memory patterns) , an area of the brain to which no certain function 

 has been previously ascribed. I must conclude that there are in this 

 area permanent records of these experiences preserved somehow m the 

 form of ganglionic patterns that can be reactivated by the electrical 

 impulses delivered to the cortex by the operator's electrode. 



It may be assumed then that in this area of cortex each successive 

 conscious experience is laid down in a relatively permanent pattern 

 of nerve-cell connections that records all those things of which a man 

 is conscious at any given time. It is as though the cortex contained a 



