Alteration of Consciousness: Tumor of the Reticular Activating System
- 1 October 1956
- journal article
- other
- Published by American Medical Association (AMA) in Archives of Neurology & Psychiatry
- Vol. 76 (4) , 380-387
- https://doi.org/10.1001/archneurpsyc.1956.02330280038004
Abstract
CONSCIOUSNESS is a word with many meanings. Schiller1remarked that it may connote attending, sensing, being alive, being responsive to stimuli, having insight, being able to communicate, and the psychoanalysts give it another interpretation. It can also be described as a state of passive awareness independent of speech or movement. Such a definition applies to crude as distinct from discriminative consciousness and will be the definition used here. Le Gros Clarke2has drawn attention to the function of the thalamic and brain-stem reticular system as the possible structural basis of what may be called a general background of consciousness. Interest in the reticular system as the activator of consciousness originates largely from animal experimental work of Magoun3and others. Clinical evidence in support of this hypothesis is rare, and it is partly for this reason that a case admitted to the Royal Edinburgh Hospital for Mental andKeywords
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