Mental growth and control / by Nathan Oppenheim.

Date:
1902
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Mental growth and control / by Nathan Oppenheim. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    These and other portions of the brain are only to a small extent made up of cells. By far the larger part, as was stated above, con- sists of nerve-fibres. These fibres have the highly important work of connecting parts and tracts of the central nervous system, and thus serve much the same purpose that wires do in connecting the parts of a system of telephones. The fibres may be divided into four different classes, and each set has its special work to do. The association fibres are of various lengths, and connect various convolutions with each other. The projectional fibres radiate from the gray matter of the surface toward the base of the brain, from which it is generally believed they proceed to the so-called pyramidal fibres of the spinal cord. The commissural fibres have in the main a horizontal direction, connecting as a rule similar parts of the hemispheres. The terminal fibres seem to be somewhat less understood than the others; but there is good reason to believe that they serve as a means of connection be- tween the surface cells and the deeper fibres of the cerebrum. In the cerebellum, or little brain, a similar arrangement, especially of the