Word: thalamus
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Cutting Connections. Purpose of the operation is to sever most of the nerve connections between the prefrontal lobes and the thalamus. The thalamus is lower, nearer the spinal cord. This part of the brain is widely believed to be the seat of emotions-fear, rage, lust, sorrow, other purely animal instincts. All animals have a thalamus, but the higher animals-above all, man-developed superimposed layers of brain tissue which exercise some control over the thalamus...
...future when a man behaves in a criminal manner, we will not say he is crazy or vicious. . . . Instead we will know that too much pyruvic acid has accumulated in his thalamic cells, or that there is no cocarboxylase, a high-brow term for Vitamin BI, operating in his thalamus. We will be able to tell that he did not grow enough association neurones descending from his cortex, so that now he does not deliver enough acetylcholine to his mid-brain...
Above all other benefits conferred by the peerade is the fact that Harvard comes as a elyster to an emotionally costive college. The student thalamus has been charging like a storage battery since before the Lafayette game...
Bared Brains. At Harvard Medical School, Dr. Walter Bradford Cannon with Dr. Philip Bard pared off various parts from the brains of animals and studied what functions were lost and what remained. They discovered that emotional activity is controlled by a very small section in the optic thalamus. This is either of a pair of oblong masses of grey matter situated in the inner recesses of the brain. It is the most primitive part of the brain and is common in all vertebrates from fishes to man. The higher thought centres of the brain keep this primitive focus under control...