and the sensations produced by the speech-movements which they stimulate. The pathological state called paraphasia is duplicated sometimes temporarily in cases of severe sick headache; one intends to mention one object (chair) and really speaks another (spoon) without detecting the mistake. I have myself had this experience; being quite unable to name correctly an object seen until someone else has spoken the word with emphasis–yet all the while allowing the incorrect word spoken to pass, and feeling astonishment that others have not understood my meaning. Similar are those cases in which patients take their own words for those of some one else, declaring, when questioned, that they themselves did not speak them.[1] Reflection leads us to the view that in these cases there is a direct flow from the auditory or visual center to the motor speech center, the kinaesthetic speech center being perhaps temporarily inhibited. The same kind of antagonism is also seen, from the other side, when there is ‘exaltation’ of the kinaesthetic center, or what is called uncontrollable ‘verbal impulse.’ The patient speaks certain words or phrases in spite of himself–against his utmost effort to speak something else.[2]
This conception of the case–not to dwell upon other points of evidence[3]–seems to harmonize well with the doctrine of nervous function now becoming more and more current. According to this doctrine, the brain is a series of centers of
- ↑ See Séglas’ very interesting cases, loc. cit., p. 150 f.
- ↑ See Séglas on “hysterical mutism,” loc. cit., p. 97 f. In dreams this is probably the case: the kinaesthetic centers are no longer inhibited, and we talk meaningless sounds, which in our dream consciousness are interpreted as rational discourse. In view of all such cases of antagonism, a distinction may be legitimate between psychic and cortical dumbness, corresponding to the current distinction on the sensory side. Just as there is a distinction between being unable to hear words (cortical deafness) and being unable to understand the meanings of words we hear (psychic deafness), so there is a distinction, shown pathologically, between being unable to speak words, and being unable to speak the words we mean. Put in different terminology, the former case would be due to a lesion of the motor elements at the ‘second level,’ and the latter case to a lesion of the motor connections between the second and the ‘third level.’
- ↑ For instance, cf. Stumpf, Tonpsychologie, I, pp. 160 ff. Further evidence accrues, also, from the consideration of tune memories below.
