Neurones in different stages of development, from a to e. In a, the elementary cell body alone is present; in c, a dendrite is shown projecting upward and an axon downward.—After Donaldson.
Fig.5 A Neurone from a Human Spinal Cord. The central portion represents the cell body. N, the nucleus; P, a pigmented or colored spot; D, a dendrite, or relatively short fiber,—which branches freely; A, an axon or long fiber, which branches but little.
THE MIND'S DEPENDENCE ON THE EXTERNAL WORLD
But can we first see how in a general way the brain and nervous system are primarily related to our thinking? Let us go back to the beginning and consider the babe when it first opens its eyes on the scenes of its new existence. What is in its mind? What does it think about? Nothing. Imagine, if you can, a person born blind and deaf, and without the sense of touch, taste, or smell. Let such a person live on for a year, for five years, for a lifetime. What would he know? What ray of intelligence would enter his mind? What would he think about? All would be dark to his eyes, all silent to his ears, all tasteless to his mouth, all odorless to his nostrils, all touchless to his skin. His mind would be a blank. He would have no mind. He could not get started to think. He could not get started to act. He would belong to a lower scale of life than the tiny animal that floats with the waves and the tide in the ocean without power to direct its own course. He would be but an inert mass of flesh without sense or intelligence.
The Mind at Birth.—Yet this is the condition of the babe at birth. It is born practically blind and deaf, without definite sense of taste or smell. Born without anything to think about, and no way to get anything to think about until the senses wake up and furnish some material from the outside world. Born with all the mechanism of muscle and nerve ready to perform the countless complex movements of arms and legs and body which characterize every child, he could not successfully start these activities without a message from the senses to set them going. At birth the child probably has only the senses of contact and temperature present with any degree of clearness; taste soon follows; vision of an imperfect sort in a few days; hearing about the same time, and smell a little later. The senses are waking up and beginning their acquaintance with the outside world.
The Work of the Senses.—And what a problem the senses have to solve! On the one hand the great universe of sights and sounds, of tastes and smells, of contacts and temperatures, and whatever else may belong to the material world in which we live; and on the other hand the little shapeless mass of gray and white pulpy matter called the brain, incapable of sustaining its own shape, shut away in the darkness of a bony case with no possibility of contact with the outside world, and possessing no means of communicating with it except through the senses. And yet this universe of external things must be brought into communication with the seemingly insignificant but really wonderful brain, else the mind could never be. Here we discover, then, the two great factors which first require our study if we would understand the growth of the mind—the material world without, and the brain within. For it is the action and interaction of these which lie at the bottom of the mind's development. Let us first look a little more closely at the brain and the accompanying nervous system.
3. STRUCTURAL ELEMENTS OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM
It will help in understanding both the structure and the working of the nervous system to keep in mind that it contains but one fundamental unit of structure. This is the neurone. Just as the house is built up by adding brick upon brick, so brain, cord, nerves and organs of sense are formed by the union of numberless neurones.
The Neurone.—What, then, is a neurone? What is its structure, its function, how does it act? A neurone is a protoplasmic cell, with its outgrowing fibers. The cell part of the neurone is of a variety of shapes, triangular, pyramidal, cylindrical, and irregular. The cells vary in size from 1/250 to 1/3500 of an inch in diameter. In general the function of the cell is thought to be to generate the nervous energy responsible for our consciousness—sensation, memory, reasoning, feeling and all the rest, and for our movements. The cell also provides for the nutrition of the fibre.Neurone Fibers.—The neurone fibers are of two kinds, dendrites and axons. The dendrites are comparatively large in diameter, branch freely, like the branches of a tree, and extend but a relatively short distance from the parent cell. Axons are slender, and branch but little, and then approximately at right angles. They reach a much greater distance from the cell body than the dendrites. Neurones vary greatly in length. Some of those found in the spinal cord and brain are not more than 1/12 of an inch long, while others which reach from the extremities to the cord, measure several feet. Both dendrites and axons are of diameter so small as to be invisible except under the microscope.
Neuroglia.—Out of this simple structural element, the neurone, the entire nervous system is built. True, the neurones are held in place, and perhaps insulated, by a kind of soft cement called neuroglia. But this seems to possess no strictly nervous function. The number of the microscopic neurones required to make up the mass of the brain, cord and peripheral nervous system is far beyond our mental grasp. It is computed that the brain and cord contain some 3,000 millions of them.
Complexity of the Brain.—Something of the complexity of the brain structure can best be understood by an illustration. Professor Stratton estimates that if we were to make a model of the human brain, using for the neurone fibers wires so small as to be barely visible to the eye, in order to find room for all the wires the model would need to be the size of a city block on the base and correspondingly high. Imagine a telephone system of this complexity operating from one switch-board!
"Gray" and "White" Matter.—The "gray matter" of the brain and cord is made up of nerve cells and their dendrites, and the terminations of axons, which enter from the adjoining white matter. A part of the mass of gray matter also consists of the neuroglia which surrounds the nerve cells and fibers, and a network of blood vessels. The "white matter" of the central system consists chiefly of axons with their enveloping or medullary, sheath and neuroglia. The white matter contains no nerve cells or dendrites. The difference in color of the gray and the white matter is caused chiefly by the fact that in the gray masses the medullary sheath, which is white, is lacking, thus revealing the ashen gray of the nerve threads. In the white masses the medullary sheath is present.