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Abstract
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In line with the recent tendency to make psychology a physical science, and to provide objective and behavioristic explanations, the author puts forth this theory. Difficulties with the physical and behavioristic descriptions of "consciousness" in terms of nervous impulses are discussed. Many conscious phenomena are localized by neurologists, at the synapses of individual neurones, in reflex are conduction. It is suggested that the totality of changes occurring upon this surface of separation between any two neurones, whenever the junctural membrane is continuously energized, from the emissive pole of one adjacent cell to the receptive pole of the next, intrinsically constitutes consciousness. Objections to an interneuronic theory of consciousness are found not to hold against this theory. Any particular unit of junctural tissue may be called a "psychon" and considered the structural unit of psychology, analogous to the neurone in neurology. The principal function of the psychon is consciousness. It seems a tenable suggestion that relativities of nerve impulses existing upon psychons of the lower nervous levels may themselves become adequate stimuli to the more complicated cortical arcs. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved)
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