Literary Notices. 333 



applications, is the discussion of the education of defectives. It is the author's 

 behef that the difference between the defective and the normal child is one of degree 

 and not of kind, and that for this reason the educational methods applied to the 

 former should not differ in principle from those which are used for the latter. 



R. M. Y. 



Franz, Shepherd Ivory. On the Functions of the Cerebrum: The Frontal Lobes. Archives of 

 Psychology, ao. z, pp. 6^. 50c. 1907. 



This monograph is one of a projected series on the functions of the cerebrum, 

 particularly on those of the so-called association areas. The first section (pp. 5-I l) 

 is introductory and historical; the second (pp. 12-28) summarizes and criticises 

 previous studies on the frontal lobes; the third (pp. 29-34) gives the author's methods 

 and the fourth (pp. 35-62) his results. 



In criticising previous results the author concurs with others in giving slight 

 weight to Munk's statement that dogs show motor disturbances of the trunk mus- 

 cles after extirpation of the frontal lobes. He noticed no such disturbances, at 

 any rate, in the cats and monkeys on which he operated. Nor do his experiments 

 lend any support to Ferrier's conclusion from experiments on monkeys (confirmed 

 in part by Grunbaum and Sherrington for the chimpanzee) that "frontal centers 

 are concerned with the movements of the head and eyes" (p. 14). A somewhat 

 detailed review of the evidence adduced by many to show that the frontal lobes are 

 the centers of inhibition, attention or of higher mental processes leaves the impres- 

 sion that this evidence is either inconclusive or is actually opposed to these infer- 

 ences. His general criticism of such work is that the observations are too casual 

 and that the accounts show too clearly the lack of "a careful analysis of the mental 

 condition" (p. 24) to be taken as univocal proof. 



Franz attempts, in his own experiments, neither primarily to discover possible 

 motor centers nor a connection between the frontal lobes and so-called higher 

 mental processes, but "to determine whether or not animals with frontal lobe 

 destruction retained simple associations or could form associations" (p. 30). The 

 animal (a cat or a monkey) was placed in a box from which, by pulling a string or 

 turning a button, it could escape and obtain food. For monkeys an intricate 

 "hurdle" was sometimes used. The habit was thoroughly formed while the animal 

 was still in a normal condition and its retention tested after the lapse of some 

 weeks or after severance of the frontal lobes, which were left in situ, from the rest 

 of the cerebrum. In some cases the operation was first performed and then the 

 attempt made to form the habit. "If the time for the performance of the act of 

 turningthe button or pulling the string, etc. (after the operation), remained the same 

 as when the earlier experiments were made, we are warranted in saying that the 

 association is retained and the nervous connections for the performance of the habit 

 have not, in the case of extirpation, been interfered with" (p. 34). In cats, the 

 attempt was made to extirpate always in front of the crucial sulcus and often the 

 section was made in the immediate neighborhood of the supraorbital fissure. For 

 monkeys the endeavor was to limit the lesions to that portion of the cerebrum ante- 

 rior to the precentral fissure. From neither of these extirpated regions did stimu- 

 lation give any constant motor response. After the formation of the habit, but 

 before the operation, the animals were put away for a week or more with no prac- 

 tice, when their retention of the habit was again tested. 



