346 RESEARCHES ON CORTICAL LOCALISATION AND 



of this, to have no fixed cerebral centres. His opinion thus approxi- 

 mates to the views enunciated during the course of this article. 



Bianchi, on the other hand, considers that the cerebrum, apart 

 from the frontal lobes, is the seat of centres for percepts, and that a 

 centre for concepts exists in the prefrontal region. He argues that 

 both percepts and concepts exist apart from words, though the evidence 

 he adduces is chiefly or entirely in favour of the existence of words 

 in the absence of percepts and concepts. He severely criticises the 

 doctrine of Flechsig, chiefly on the ground that the phenomena of 

 anatomical evolution do not correspond with those of the development 

 of functional activity. For example, he remarks that the supposed 

 centre for reading in an imbecile may be completely myelinated although 

 the subject may never have learned to read. He states that histo- 

 logical evidence is not in favour of the areas of projection possessing 

 a simpler structure than the regions of association. He discusses the 

 complex nature of the processes of association which are necessary 

 for the synthesis of a perception. He thus regards the portion of the 

 cortex which is now differentiated into areas of projection or sensory 

 areas and into posterior regions of association, as a series of perceptive 

 zones ; and he is of the opinion that the only regions of the brain 

 which can be regarded as associational are the prefrontal lobes, which 

 are generally admitted to contain no projection fibres. He regards 

 these lobes as the region of cerebral executive government, and con- 

 siders that here the elaborated products of the perceptive zones, or 

 mantellar parliament, are fused together. 



Instead of three anatomical grades in the hierarchy of cerebral 

 function, namely, areas of projection, regions of lower association, 

 and a region of higher association, Bianchi thus recognises but two, 

 zones of perception and a centre for concepts.. Further, he regards 

 percepts and concepts as entities with an anatomical basis apart from 

 that for words. His opinion thus differs from the views elaborated 

 during the course of this article, namely, that percepts and concepts 

 are merely psychological generalisations signifying the results of 

 ' processes of cerebral association which differ in detail, though they 

 possess an underlying general similarity, on each occasion on which 

 they occur. Bianchi regards words, not as symbols for the integration 

 of processes of cerebral association without which they are meaningless, 

 but as means for the communication of already existing percepts and 

 concepts. Language, in the opinion of Bianchi, is thus merely a 

 mechanism for the expression of thought, and not, as is the view of 

 the writer, a symbolic instrument without which it is impossible for 

 the psychic functions to be adequately performed. 



