Evening Star Newspaper, December 29, 1936, Page 4

A—4 » OUT OF THE BRAIN Reported at Meeting of Scientists. By & Btaff Correspondent of The Star. ATLANTIC OITY, December 20.— Tmagination and the capacity for ab- stract thought can be cut out of the brain. These distinctive properties of hu- man beings are lost almost completely by persons who have suffered ex- tensive lesions of the fronfal lobes of the cerebral cortex, according to & paper based on 20 years of studies presented before psychologists attend- ing the sessions of the American As- sociation for the Advancement of Science here by Dr. Kurt Goldstein of the Monteflore Hospital, New York City. Such lesions in the part of the brain in which man shows the greatest dif- ferentiation from the great apes and which often has been regarded as the seat of intelligence often are caused by operations for brain tumors. Su- perficially, Dr. Goldstein said, the patients may show no mental change and even perform some tasks requir- ing concentration better than before. They completely lose, however, the capacity to do some very simple things. Could Redraw Details. A man with such a frontal lobe lesion could look at a fairly compli- cated picture of a house and then, without looking at it, redraw it in all its details. He was completely unable, however, to draw two lines at a 45- degree angle with the opening up- ward without keeping his eye on the design—something any kindergarten child could do easily. When the angle was reversed so that the opening was downward, the drawing gave him no | difficulty. Between these two tasks, Dr. Gold- stein explained, there was the widest gulf in human mental life. The 45- degree angle opening downward cor- responded with many things the man knew in real life—the gable of a house, an Indian teepee, etc. When it opened upward it was simply two meaningless lines in abstract space. Memory and capacity to comprehend disappear completely except for things in concrete, familiar patterns. His tests also showed, Dr. Goldstein reported, that such a person:has al- most no capacity to adjust, mentally or emotionally. He can think only in a straight line. When such a person is asked to count to 20 he can go ahead as well as anybody else, but cannot resume counting if he is in- terrupted at any point. Once there is a break in normal friendly relations he cannot resume friendship again. Reports Two Attitudes. In every normal mind. Dr. Goldstein kaid, there are two attitudes toward the world—the concrete and the ab- stract—which in ordinary behavior are 80 mixed together that they cannot be differentiated. One is the atti~ tude of taking the world exactly as one finds it and being guided entirely by the environment. The other is that of rearranging things in new combinations, which is the exclusive property of human beings. This ca- pacity apparently is centered entirely in the frontal lobes. New light was thrown on the be- havior of the brain at the same meet- To Take Over __THE EVENING STAR, WASHINGTON, D. INAGINATION CUT [Robot Weather Man Expected. [3zz-2: ANERICAN INDAN Task of Planes Device W hich Makes Automatic Record Result of 20 Years Study| of Altitude, Temperature and Humid- ity, Described BY THOMAS R. HENRY, Staff Correspondent of The Star. * ATLANTIC CITY, December 20.— A robot weather man, soaring above the clouds on the lookout for impend- ing storms and temperature changes, was described before meteorologists attending the annual convention of the American Association for the Ad- vancement of Science here today. This device, which makes a contin- uous and automatic record of altitude, pressure, temperature, humidity and cloudiness, has been constructed for the United States Weather Bureau by Drs. Harry Diamond, W. S. Hinman and F. W. Dunmore of the Bureau of Standards. One of its chief constituents is & bundle of human hair which measures humidity with extreme accuracy by its contractions and expansions. May End Use of Plane. The little instrument, the inventors reported, is expected eventually to do away entirely with the use of airplanes in weather forecasting, thus taking | from the shoulders of aviation a dan- gerous and irksome job. The entire equipment, including a | miniature radio transmitting set and | batteries, weighs less than 2 pounds. It is sent aloft on a 5-foot balloon. Not only does it make continuous records of changes in the upper nt-‘ mosphere, but it is actually nperlted1 by these changes. For example, air | pressure decreases at a known rate with altitude. This principle is util- | ized to move a small switch arm over | a series of electrical contacts. The to Scientists. tensity is measured and recorded by wiring certain of the contacts to the photo-electric cell whose electrical re- sistance varies in accordance with the amount of light falling on it. This gives an automatic measure of the density and thickness of clouds through which the instrument passes. Automatic Recoerding. On the ground there are automatic receiving and recording instruments which plot all these data graphically by means of & moving pen controlled by the received signals. The pen sets itself according to the pitch of the note being received. The robot weather men, the Bureau of Standards physicists reported to- day, not only can go higher than is possible for any airplane, but they can go aloft in weather which would make plane ascensions highly dangerous or impossible. Another important ad- vantage over airplanes is that it per- mits the use of radio direction-finder methods for tracking the path of the balloon, thus giving data on upper air wind velocities. Weather forecasting of the future, it was stressed, probably will depend more and more on constant recording of changes miles above the earth's surface. These play the most impor- tant part in the “air mass analysis” system of forecasting which now is being studied by the Weather Bureau and which, it is believed, eventually will make possible much more accu- rate forecasts than are possible by present methods. The development of & pressure- operated robot, it was brought out, contacts are so spaced that for a de- | has been the object of many experi- crease in air pressure equal to a few | menters in the past but hitherto they hundred feet in altitude the arm will | have found no satisfactory solution move from one contact to the next. With each contact the radio trans- mitter sends to earth a predetermined signal which is automatically re- corded. The signal varies with each | contact 30 that the exact altitude of the instrument at any instant is known. Radio Note Sent. Between these pressure contacts is another series of contacts which are wired to an electrical resistance ele- | ment controlled by a bundle of human | hair. This varies indensity, and | hence in electrical resistance, with | humidity. The switch arm, moved by air pressure across these contacts, ' connects this variable resistor with | the transmitter circuit so that with | each contact there is sent to earth a | radio note proportionate to the amount ‘; of moisture in the atmosphere. | When the switch arm passes over | insulating strips lying between the contacts & note is sent out, the fre- | quency of which is determined by the | resistance to an electric current of & small glass tube fllled with sulphuric acid. This resistance changes at a constant rate with temperature. As the balloon ascends light in- | | factor involved, Dr. Jensen said, it is a tendency to easily excitable emo- tions. Cows Smarter Than Horses. Cows are smarter than horses. Calm, plegmatic bossy munching her | of the problems of weight and com- Being dead drunk may save the drink- er from death because another drink might strike the breathing center in the medulla of the brain, just above the spinal cord, and respiration would stop. Sometimes this happens anyway and the man dies. Personality Traits, Some of the fundamental person- ality traits which distinguish an in- dividual can be detected and meas- ured in the first 12 months of a baby's existence, according to a report of ex- periments made to psychologists of the association by Dr. Arnold Gesell, di- rector of the child development clinic of Yale University. A frequent claim of psychologists during the past decade has been that personality is largely the result of training and environment during the first months of life and can be molded by parents and nurses. Dr. Gesell's findings from intensive study of five infants indicate that there are inborn characteristics which make their ap- pearance from the first and persist with little change despite what hap- pens in the outside world. Dr. Gesell made his tests of 15 measurable traits. Dr. Compton Speaks. How much power would be required to lift a fly 7 inches in a year? Just about as much as the energy of a trans-Atlantic radio signal caught by a receiving station in Newfound- land, was the answer of Dr. Karl T. Compton, president of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in his presi- dential address to the association. ‘The possibility of amplifying this almost infinitely feeble force so that it can be heard clearly and without distortion was cited by Dr. Compton as one of the wonders made possible by the discovery 30 years ago of the tiniest thing in the universe, the electron. In the intervening years, Dr. Comp- ton said, a discovery which was sup- posed to be useless has opened the doors to a new world of unimaginable wonders, and a business of close to $150,000,000 & year, with the end still far from being within sight. An even more striking instance of the amplification powers of electron | were presented by Dr. plexity. All such devices in the past have depended on clockwork or some iknd of a motor for their operation. Treatment of Alcoholism. A new treatment of chronic alco- holism and an explanation of its cause Edward S. Cowles, psychiatrist of Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Cowles gives the fellow who can’t stop drinking four or five spinal punctures to withdraw excess fluid from his brain. He applies the same treatment to delirium tremens, when the drunk is seeing snakes. It works, he says, even in the event of Korsa- koff’s psychosis, the final depth of the | alcoholic. which might be likened to | & continuous mild delirium tremens. tubes was cited. Said Dr. Compton: “What is the largest number that | has any physical significance? One common answer is one followed by 110 | ciphers. This is about the number of electrons, the smallest things known, | which would be required to fill up the | universe to the greatest distances dis- | covered by astronomy, if they cuuld‘ | be imagined as closely packed side by | side to fill up this whole space. Energy of Voice. “Yet this number is very small in- deed compared with the aggregate fac- tor by which the energy of a voice striking a telephone transmitter in San | Francisco is amplified by electronic| tubes in the process of a long dis-a Dr. Cowles divides into | tance telephone conversation to Lon- oo getting dead dnns s | don. This amplification is about one First, the alcohol attacks the higher | followed by 256 ciphers. If the uni-| centers of the cerebral cortex, which | Yérse Were multiplied in size by the normally act as a brake on too free | PUMber of times it is larger than an expression of one's ideas and im- | electron, it could still not hold as many | pulses. There is a brisk flow of | electrons as the number of this tele- speech and action. The person is self- l e confident. The power of deliberation is lessened and the nicety of judg- | ment is overthrown. | Second, deeper centers of the cortex are affected. There is still more self- | confidence, inflamed emotions and ex- cited talk. This is the stage when | the drunken man is “looking for a | fight.” For the first time his speech | becomes thick and his movements clumsy. Third, as the drug attacks still | FAYORS Greeting Cards Hats . . . Noisemakers Balloons C., HELD “NEW" RAC Anthropological Society Hears Ice Retreated Before Migration to Continent. The peopling of America was & rather late event in pre-history. It may have come about only when Northern Europe and Asia was in- ‘vaded by the Germanic tribes, forcing & mass migration of the earlier in- habitants across Siberia and into Alaska, Such were conclusions presented by Dr. Herbert J. Spinden of the Brook- lyn Museum in his presidential ad- dress before the American Anthropo- logical Society last night. It is impossible, Dr. Spinden con- tended, to attribute any very great antiquity to the American Indian when he is considered in the light of world chronology. First, the original migrants were evidently a race of sub- Arctic huriters who came over a route close to the Arctic circle and who had & well-develeped new Stone Age cul- ture. The peopling of Northern Eu- rope and Asia would have been im- possible until the retreat of the last glaciation and until forests had grown up on the denuded land. The chief stage of new Stone Age culture in | Europe, he pointed out, came almost at the heights of glacial periods and when the ice began to retreat the path of expansion was eastward rather than northward. . Northward Trend Dated. Only toward the middle af the new Stone Age period in Europe, Dr. Spin- | den said, is the evidence of & modest | trend northward with the recent dis- | covery of a Summer camp of reindeer hunters near Hamburg. From then | on there was a progressive invasion of the sub-Arctic areas and settle- ments of colonies of fishermen around | the rim of the Baltic, then a fresh- water sea with its rim well above the Atlantic. The Scandinavian penin- sula still was covered with ice. In these old Baltic, fishing settle- ments, dating from 7600 to 5400 B.C., TUESDAY, DECEMBER 29, 1936. —_—,,,— e —— ] running into Lake Baikal in Siberia. There archaeologists have uncovered polished stone chisels and knives, har- poon points, needles, bone awls and spoons, groved arrow polishers of sandstone and both plain and basket- marked pottery. There were several skeletons whose bones were stained with ochre, a common burial practice of the red men. In other graves there were daggers and saws of bone edged with stone, small sculptures in the form of fish, and a little copper. From this point, he says, the way was open to America. A water road along the Lena River leads half way to East Cape, Siberia, which may have a jumping off place for the scattered bands that crossed into the New World. Physical evidence, Dr. Spinden said, shows that the American Indian is more closely allied with Siberian and Northeastern Asiatic stock, but there is also some evidence of an infusion of the white races. A possible expla- nation of the colonization of the Americas, he said, is that of a “mass migration of heterogeneous cultural elements brought about by the in- vasion of Northern Europe by the Ger- manic peoples which displaced east- ward the peoples living in northern latitudes, finally spilling them into America. But this mass migration could not have taken place until Northern Europe and Asia were them- selves occupied. Drying up of Cen- tral Asla may have been another cause for tribal movements.” Sees Survival of Animals. Recent findings of human artifacts | in America, associated with bones of | supposedly Ice-Age animals, Dr. Spin- den said, has given new impetus to the urge to give the red man a great antiquity. A probable explanation, he insisted, is that some of the more im- portant Ice-Age animals survived the was brought out by Henry B. Collins, | jr., of the National Museum. He presented this as an alternative to the assumption that the Aleutians ever were an actual pathway from Asia to North America because of the large stretches of open water which it would have beem necessary for the emigrants to have crossed. Typical objects of Southern Alaskan cuiture, he said, are found today in Kam- chatks and it is difficult to see how the connection could have been made except over the far-flung Aleutian chain at a relatively late period. Three Adams and Oné Eve. There were three Adams and only one Eve in the Hawaiian Eden. Such, at least, is one of the inter- pretations placed on Hawali's song of creation, or “beginning in the night,” described before the society by Dr. Matha Beckwith of Vassar College. This Pacific genesis, she sald, pur- ports to relate the history of the world in the great darkness before the hu- man race appeared on earth. The first seven epochs of time were “the dark.” In the words of the creation chant, as quoted by Dr. Beckwith: “In this time grew the sea moss and the little plants on the land. The water was made to be a nest that gave birth and bore all things in the womb of the deep.” Light and Woman Appear. From the simplest forms of life in | this first epoch the chant goes on to enumerate distinet species of animal and plant life born into the dark, from fishes, reptiles and creeping plant forms to the trees and the pig, rat and dog—the highest mammals known | on the islands before the coming of | the whites. In the eighth epoch light | breaks on the darkness with the ap- | pearance of La'ila’i, the woman, ac- companied by three men, from whom | the human race descended. retreat of the ice and have only been dying off in the last few thousand | years. There are still forms surviving | in America, he pointed out, which | have disappeared in other parts of the | world, So the fact that ancient Amer- | icans hunted extinct forms of bison and the mammoth may be evidence of | the lateness of the animals rather than of the earliness of the men. The possibility of a reverse migra- ! tion from Alaska to Asia at a rela- tively late period by way of the Aleu- | tlan Islands—or at least an exchange of culture elements in that direction— are found, Dr. Spinden said, what may | be the ancestral types of American | Indian technology. There were | canoes, postulated by the finding of | paddles. There were also harpoons, ! fish hooks, bone daggers, amber jew- | elry, long-toothed combs, crude stone axes and stone knives fitted into horn But, he pointed out, it was neces- | sary for this culture to spread much | farther tothe northward before it | found an open road across Siberia. Oniy about 2500 B.C., he said, does it | spread from Scandinavia across Fin- | land and Russia and into Siberia. Traced to Siberia. Perhaps the most complete set of objects illustrating the ancestral cul- ture of the American Indians, Dr. Spinden said, has been found recently in cemeteries along one of the rivers NEW YEAR If Your Watch Is Worth Repalring '—-h - --:n repairing mnfl‘: re of expert worl manship and falr prices here. CASTELBERG'S 1004 F St. N.W. The Hawalian genesis has remained | New Year’s obscure, Dr. Beckwith said, because it was phrased in priestly symbolism | which was not intended to be under- stood by the common people. She cited evidence to indicate that this work is a variant of & genesis leg- end which was generally distributed among the Polynesian peoples, leaving remnants among the Maoris of New Zealand and the aboriginals of Easter Island. NEW ELECTIONS BILL Plan to Change Time From No- vember to October. The presidential election would be moved up a month—from the first Tuesday in November to the first Tuesday in October—under terms of & bill which Representative Sumners, Democrat, of Texas, will introduce in Congress. The proposed change is intended to provide more time to settle cons | tests over electoral votes should any develop in the future Going Home for “the Holidays? STORE YOUR CAR in the Heate CONTINENTAL GARAGE Attached to Hotel Contimental Entrance on D St. SPECIAL HOLIDAY RATES __Telephone Met. 4612 Coughs due to colds often relieved wii one swallow of Thoxine. Help I protect sicep. Only 35¢. Guaranteed. =~THOXIN Eve Pardy HOTEL CONTINENTAL 10 to 3 7-COURSE DINNER HAPPY WALKER'S MUSIC () Person Plus Tax S 4.() SMART SHOW FAVORS GALORE Reservations now being accepted Call Nat’l 1672 | clover could tell the aristocrat of the | lower synapses, one sees double. There | ing by Dr. Margaret Rheinberger of Brown University from experiments with the “brain waves” of cats. Electrodes sunk into the cerebral cor- tices of these animals at different points detected electric currents run- ning through the brains which varied with the nature of the stimulation. In one case, Dr. Rheinberger showed, the behavior of the animal could be predicted as much as 10 minutes in advance by a characteris~ tic change in the pattern of the brain ‘waves—some time before any idea of sciously entered the mind of the cat itself. All these animals were “house broke.” The appearance of the par- ticular pattern is known in the lab- oratory as the “sand-box sign.” The studies showed that the cortex of the braln is continuously active as a whole, but when some particular sense is stimulated the patterns va- ried in a peculiar way. The areas concerned in touch and movement seemed to work together, as did those for sight and sound. Sick Headache Described. The recurrent sick headache, known 8s migraine, was described as like “a perpetually emotional drunk” by Dr. Milton B. Jensen, consulting psy- ehologist of Louisville, Ky., who told of cures brought about by psycholog- | dcal methods. A headache, Dr. Jensen said, almost nvariably is due to the amount of fluid in and around the brain. Either too little or too much results in stretching the large blood vessels that supply the cortex. When a person is emotionally upset, he said, there are profound chemical changes in the | [f| body, one of the results of which is to tighten the muscles at the back of the neck, which interferes with the flow of blood &nd other fluids. At the same time the blood has been made richer in blood sugar from the effect of the emotion on the liver through the adrenal glands and in Ted corpuscles through the “squees- ing of the spleen,” due to the same cause, This explains, he pointed out, why emotionally upset women complain so frequently of headaches. Resort to & dark and quiet room because of a headache also is often the escape of girls in crises of their lové affairs. It is not just an excuse, Dr. Jensen stressed. The headache is real enough, Migraine in the past has been re- garded as an hereditary curse of some persons, in the same category as epilepsy. If there is a hereditary January 4, 1937, at 6:30 P.M. Standard three-year course lead- ing to degrees of LL. B. and J.D. Graduate courses leading to d grees of LL. M, M. P. L. and 8.J.D. All classes held at hours con- venient for employed students. School of Economics and Government Degree courses of collegiate grade offered in Political Science, Gov- ernment, Economics, Psychology, History, Finance, ess and Languages. Address Secreta: Nai'l 6617. 13th St N.W- race track a lot if she could talk and would be considerably the aptest pupil in a barnyard school, according to an experiment reported by Dr. L. Pearl Gardner of Cornell University. She taught cows and horses to open the hinged tops of feed boxes which contained food. Then she gave an animal the choice of opening éne of two such boxes, one containing food | and covered with a black cloth, and | | the other bare and empty. The in- F telligence test eonsisted of the num- | | iject would always open the covered | | box first all the time. | Cows learned much quicker and the | | best milkers learned better than the | | poor milkers. Aristocratic, nervous! | polo ponies. on the other hand, were | no better than farm draft horses. The old family doctor’s familiar “stick out your tongue” had a diag-| nostic value which the up-to-date | physician doesn’t appreciate, it was stressed in a paper by Dr. Bernard L. Comroe of the University of Penn- sylvania. About a dozen diseases, including | many cases of syphilis, scarlet fever, dianetes, allergy, hyperthyroidism, congestive heart failure, jaundice and charea, often can be diagnosed from the appearance of the tongue alone | if the doctor knows what to look for, he said. On the other hand, the coated tongue doesn’t necessarily mean anything at all. It is quite frequent in smokers and in old peo- ple without indicating an upset| stomach. | The Foening Sfar ™ OU can put yourself d Advertisement and around W. Star Class Aufdorized Star Display the | is difficulty in standing or walking. | The cerebellum, the part of the brain | which controls balance, has been af- fected and the typical drunken reel results. A man may still be quarrel- some, or this mood may change into | that of & crying jag. Horns . . . Serpentine Confetti Party Games Hundreds of items to select from, ranging from the least expensive to the elaborate. | i the sub- |’ what it Eiterded S toidolhaa o || ber of trials required before the sub. 4 AIVERTISENENTS ( RECEIVED HERE Pearson’s Pharmacy—2448 Wisc. Ave. N.W.. 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