What Can We Know about Memory?

Abstract

On 27 March 1885 the young surgeon Victor Horsley gave a Friday evening discourse at the Royal Institution under the title “The motor centres of the brain and the mechanism of the will” (Horsley, 1885). He was standing in for a “distin-guished man who has been prevented by a most painful bereavement from addressing you tonight.” I have not been able to find out who this man was, but his bereavement was our gain, since the young Horsley was induced to show us something of his thinking about brain and mind. The bulk of the lecture was essentially an account of the parts of the brain and their involvement in reflex action, and they show us a picture astonishingly similar to what might be given in a lecture today. True we don't talk about the flow of nerve energy from sense organs through the brain to muscles. But basically our schemes of thought have developed shockingly little in the years since Hughlings Jackson, Ferrier, and Horsley did their work. I shall try to discuss some of the difficulties that have prevented the development of a better model and perhaps can also point to ways in which they are beginning to be overcome. © 1970, British Medical Journal Publishing Group. All rights reserved.