Discussion

PAUL MacLEAN, M.D. Departments of Psychiatry and of Physiology, School of Medicine, Yale University.

On rereading the paper Dr. Kubie published in 1930 in which he dealt with the possibility of self-re-excitation in the nervous system by impulses which move in closed circuits, I was impressed again by what a tour de force it was—and remains. But, disregarding the content, it was a tour de force of a different character, say, from Stephen Crane's accomplishment in writing The Red Badge of Courage. Crane wrote amazingly realistic descriptions of battle without ever having seen combat. But Dr. Kubie, when he wrote his paper, was somewhat of a veteran in what Cajal in his eightieth year called 'the struggle … between the mind of man and the blind energy of natural forces'. For Dr. Kubie, though young at the time, had attacked the complexities of the nervous system under the bright banners of such brilliant commanders as Cajal, Hortega, Spielmeyer, and Sherrington.

In this discussion I shall not elaborate any further on the fascinating implications of reverberatory activity in self-re-exciting chains of neurons, which we now know to exist at all levels of the nervous system, and to which Dr. Kubie has referred. Nor am I going to dwell on some of the other physiological aspects of this paper, such as the possible role of the centrencephalic system and the other reticulum of the neuraxis in the sphere of consciousness. Whether or