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The Third Conference of the Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation on the problems of consciousness held in New York on March 10 and 11, 1952 have been reported in accordance with their usual methods, and yields a fascinating roundtable discussion adding to the findings of the prior two conferences in this field. The format is the same, and the give-and-take repartee, as always, makes these reports interesting as well as informative.
The discussions begin with a presentation by Kety on consciousness and metabolism of the brain. Beginning with his model, which he likens to the “Bostonians' map of the U. S.” which “overemphasizes those areas with which he is familiar and underemphasizes others,” his approach is mechanistic and he soon gets into heated discussion with his colleagues who, as might be expected, have different viewpoints. The result is a provocative and interesting verbal give-and-take, which eventually develops some really intriguing arguments. Kety eventually gets back to problems of cerebral circulation and metabolism, discussing effects of senility, hypoglycemia, schizophrenia and various drug induced shifts.
The second section, by Wolberg, takes up hypnotic phenomena and presents a hypno-analytic treatment session and then a discussion of a motion picture dealing with unconscious motivation. The script of the movie is good, but mere dialogue is hard to see, and the presentation loses much for this reason.
Experimental work on sleep is the last formal presentation, given by Marcel Monnier from Geneva, and is concerned with “the effects of electrical stimulation in unanesthetized, freely moving animals and in man.” Electrical patterns of brain activity are discussed and the diencephalic sleep centers and thalamic systems come in for considerable evaluation.