Meetings of the New York Psychoanalytic Society

November 27, 1951. SOME IMPLICATIONS FOR PSYCHOANALYSIS OF MODERN CONCEPTS OF THE ORGANIZATION OF THE BRAIN. Lawrence S. Kubie, M.D.

Current research in the structure and function of the central nervous system has yielded data of interest to psychoanalysis. The theory that reverberating

circuits exist in the central nervous system was proposed by Dr. Kubie in 1930. Such phenomena as self-perpetuation, immunity from psychotherapeutic influence and susceptibility to shock therapy could be explained by such circuits. One phase of central nervous system function is the reception, generation and redistribution of energy. The sensorimotor cortex is related in a point-for-point manner with external receptors and effectors and by projection with the external world. Penfield's work has demonstrated, however, that in the cortex of the temporal lobe (at least in the temporal lobe subject to epileptic discharge), memories are stored. Organized impressions rather than the elements of experiences are stored. Illusory variations in the quality of perception—for example, deja vu, distortions of time, space and clarity—appear in the reproduction of such temporal lobe memories. MacLean has pointed out that the primitive forebrain, derived from the rhinencephalon, is linked both with the depths of the temporal lobe and with the nontemporal cortex. At this site, therefore, one can imagine the association of external and internal sensations, conceptions of the material and of the abstract, and also phylogenetically and ontogenetically old and new nervous mechanisms—a site par excellence for symbol formation. The structures immediately necessary for the phenomenon of consciousness are presumed by Penfield to lie in the diencephalic region and he has called them collectively the centrencephalic system. In the possible relations between temporal cortex and centrencephalic system one may speculatively see the basis of conscious, preconscious and unconscious. Magoun and his as