doi:10.1093/brain/awr218
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BRAIN
A JOURNAL OF NEUROLOGY
OCCASIONAL PAPER
John Hughlings Jackson’s evolutionary neurology:
a unifying framework for cognitive neuroscience
Elizabeth A. Franz1 and Grant Gillett2
1 Department of Psychology and fMRIotago, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand
2 Bioethics Centre, Division of Health Sciences, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand
Correspondence to: Liz Franz,
Department of Psychology,
University of Otago,
William James Building,
275 Leith Walk
Dunedin 9016, New Zealand
E-mail: [email protected]
John Hughlings Jackson was a pioneer in neurology who thought deeply about the structure of the brain and how that manifested itself in the various syndromes that he saw in the clinic. He enunciated a theory of the evolution and dissolution of neural
function based on the idea that basic sensorimotor processes become embedded in networks of connections that relate them in
successively more complex ways to allow for performance of more and more nuanced and adaptive functions. Hughlings Jackson
noted the curious link between human thought, action and speech. He further recognized that disinhibition or release from
control and direction marked neurological damage. His integrative framework remains deeply relevant to the plethora of results
being produced by the careful and diverse experimentation currently undertaken with the aid of brain imaging techniques of
which he could only dream. In celebration of the memory of John Hughlings Jackson, we revisit his concept of neural evolution
and development, which led to what eventually became a leading model of brain organization, whereby a new order of
behavioural control—the conscious mind—is created out of simpler elements, in a manner similar to Herbert Spencer’s evolutionary theory. By this Hughlings Jackson did not mean anything dualistic but merely that the highest layer of evolution of
nervous arrangements was ‘highly complicated’ and that dissolution of that higher level leaves ‘a lower consciousness and a
shallower nervous system’.
Keywords: brain behaviour; relationships
Abbreviation: BA = Brodmann area
A historical context
As the second half of the 19th century unfolded, physicians were
faced with the need to diagnose neurological disease with no
established systematic methods; having only the aid of primitive
mechanical devices and diagnostic tools. Scientific studies of biology and psychology soon became open to the influential views of
scholars like Herbert Spencer, who is still best known for his belief
that higher life forms evolved from lower ones, and perhaps less
well known for the related idea that human reasoning and
thought evolved from the automatic responses of lower beings
(Spencer, 1855). Those evolutionary ideas captured the attention
and passion of the young doctor-in-training, John Hughlings
Jackson and would shape what began as Hughlings Jackson’s
own series of careful examinations of randomly presented patients
with myriad symptoms and backgrounds, into what eventually
would become ‘a’ if not ‘the’ leading theory of brain organization
of the 21st century (and perhaps beyond).
Received June 26, 2011. Revised July 28, 2011. Accepted August 3, 2011
ß The Author (2011). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Guarantors of Brain. All rights reserved.
For Permissions, please email: [email protected]
Hughlings Jackson’s evolutionary neurology
We note here that John ‘Hughlings-Jackson’ preferred the
hyphenated version of his name, which joins the surnames of his
mother Sarah Hughlings and father Samuel Jackson, and evidence
suggests he even used that version when signing medical reports
(Swash, 1986, p. 984). However, we have decided in the present
article to present his surnames without hyphenation to be consistent with most written accounts in the literature, although we
always present both names together (Hughlings Jackson) so as
to preserve the link, as he wished.
Hughlings Jackson was born on 4 April 1835 as the youngest
son (among three other sons and one daughter) of a farmer and
brewer (and was raised without direct influence of his mother,
who died when he was only 1 year old: Taylor, 1925, p. 2). At
the young age of 15, John Hughlings Jackson already demonstrated hints of what would eventually become his lifelong passion, as he ended his early years of formal education and began
informal studies as an apprentice in the household of two physicians, father and son, in a family named Anderson (the elder of
whom was also a lecturer at York Medical School) (York and
Steinberg, 2006, p. 4). Through the years, Hughlings Jackson
began to put together the pieces of the complex puzzle of
human nature and thought through his own careful examination,
detailed logging and analysis of patients who presented with focal
lesions causing epilepsy, hemiplegia, and often loss of speech
(aphasia). He began to conceive of such diseases as the result of
processes of dissolution, the opposite of evolution, or
de-evolution, and it seems clear his views were influenced by
the associationist psychology of George Henry Lewis, Alexander
Bain and (as already indicated) Herbert Spencer’s evolutionary
doctrine (Dewhurst, 1982, pp. 12–13).
With time, Hughlings Jackson’s ideas gained momentum in a
broader set of scientific communities, as not only neurologists
and other physicians continued to recognize their importance,
but also as neuroscientists, psychologists and philosophers
around the world increasingly recognized (and continue to recognize) and appreciate Hughlings Jackson for his remarkable insight,
foresight and guidance. Those who have read others’ accounts of
Hughlings Jackson as a person might also glean something of the
humility, integrity and honesty with which he pursued his passion
and convictions, in the face of changing social times and often
under difficult personal circumstances. As suggested by Taylor
(1925), ‘It is difficult to realize the chaotic state of knowledge
of nervous diseases which existed before Dr. Jackson’s time’ and
‘how great a part Dr. Jackson’s work and stimulus played in evolving order out of this chaos’ (Taylor, 1925, p. 11).
Evolution and dissolution
Perhaps it was the desperate need for a more systematic method
of diagnosis (as one might infer from the writings of York and
Steinberg, 2006, p. 10) that set into motion the impetus for
Hughlings Jackson to develop a system of diagnosis by extrapolating on the fundamental insight—that the brain’s higher centres
elaborate complex processes out of simple forebears (an idea
also known to be proposed by Spencer). Hughlings Jackson
emphasized the importance of ‘the correspondence of the
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organism with the environment’ (Hughlings Jackson, 1884,
p. 705); therefore, the higher centres are suited to the
re-representation of the body and the conditions to which it is
responsive. This led to his proposal that the brain evolved with
increasingly higher levels of re-representation of basic sensorimotor representations. Hughlings Jackson proposed a three-level
system that essentially comprised a sensorimotor machine (the
whole brain), with its lower level defined as anterior spinal horns
and motor nerve nuclei, its middle level of motor cortex and basal
ganglia and highest level, that which ‘re-re-represents the body’,
consisting of the premotor (frontal) cortex (York and Steinberg,
2006, p. 19). In his words, ‘the highest centres, through the intermediation of the middle and lowest centres . . . re-represent all
parts of the organism in most intricate combinations’ (Hughlings
Jackson, 1884, p. 703). According to this view, sensory impressions and representations of bodily movements are embedded in
more complex structures and processes. Hughlings Jackson further
held that ‘mentation’ is what we call the highest level so that ‘for
every mental state there is a correlative nervous state’ (Hughlings
Jackson, 1884. p. 706). What arises is ‘. . . an organization of many
different nervous arrangements of our highest centres, during
actual converse with the environment’ (Hughlings Jackson, 1884,
p. 706).
Hughlings Jackson’s keen observations and sketch of what
would one day become a leading model of brain organization,
took place long before modern-day technologies of brain imaging
were invented. Hughlings Jackson documented his own use of
applying ice to the back of a patient’s neck while examining retinal
vessels to measure possible alterations in cerebral blood flow
(Hughlings Jackson, 1863; York and Steinberg, 2006, p. 27).
Without assuming an overarching theory of mind or brain function
‘his attitude was phenomenal [or phenomenological]’ (Head,
1915) and his hypotheses sprang from ‘clinical fact’ but his conclusions have general and far-reaching implications for current
work in many fields including neurology, psychiatry, psychology
and more generally, neuroscience. His influence on one of the
most famous psychologists in history, William James, was clear
in The Principles of Psychology, where James articulated
Hughlings Jackson’s views of psychical evolution in terms of
the constitution of brain function (and therefore mind) from
simple sensory and motor elements (James, 1890/1918, Vol. I,
pp. 29–30). James also noted that Hughlings Jackson’s explanation
of epileptic seizures ‘involves principles exactly like those which I
am bringing forward here’ in that ‘the ‘loss of consciousness’ in
epilepsy is due to the most highly organized brain processes being
exhausted and thrown out of gear. The less organized (more instinctive) processes, ordinarily inhibited by the others, are then
exalted . . .’ (James, 1890/1918, Vol. II, pp. 125–6). Hughlings
Jackson, who was himself strongly influenced by the neuropsychiatry teachings of Thomas Laycock, particularly with regard to the
latter’s views on reflex functions in the brain (Dewhurst, pp. 8–9),
also had a very strong influence on the field of psychiatry (Head,
1915; Evans, 1972; Fullinwinder, 1983); however, the present article concerns mainly examples rooted in neuroscience.
Hughlings Jackson’s writings expressed his deep convictions
about the mind and the brain. His early writings already warned
that we should not ‘classify on a mixed method of anatomy,
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physiology and psychology, any more than we should classify
plants on a mixed, general and empirical method as exogens, kitchen herbs, graminaceae and shrubs’ (Hughlings Jackson, 1878,
p. 313). These mixed patterns of categorization and description,
uninformed by a unifying theoretical structure, were scattered
throughout the burgeoning writing on psychology and neurology
of his time. Hughlings Jackson emphasized his views that higher
nervous processes (mentation) incorporated layers of information
patterned by constraints and correlations representing ‘the correspondence of the organism with the environment’ such that the
direct relation of a primitive reflex or more automatic response
pattern becomes integrated into those higher order patterns. He
then illustrated his views with well-chosen examples. Thus, in
referring to persons with aphasia, he remarked that ‘phrases,
which have a propositional structure, have in the mouths of
speechless patients . . . no propositional function’ (Hughlings
Jackson, 1879, p. 209). In recovery, as the speech functions are
reorganized, both the relevance of what is said, and normal propositional use of speech, reassert themselves in the control of the
words uttered. Hughlings Jackson realized that this higher level of
control or ‘propositional function’ whereby a person’s reasoning
processes come into play through the to-and-fro of opinion in conversation adds a depth and the essence of complex mental function.
Although recognized predominantly for his insights on neurological disease, Hughlings Jackson’s fundamental idea of brain organization gained little publicity at its conception, and took many
years after his death (7 October 1911) to begin to be appreciated
for its potential to explain complex brain–behaviour relationships
such as those studied in cognitive neuroscience laboratories today.
While the scope of the present review focuses primarily on his
doctrine of evolution and dissolution, Hughlings Jackson also developed a number of doctrines that have been very influential, and
which we touch on here only briefly. Hughlings Jackson’s principle
of concomitance, for example, developed in line with his view that
there is no need to invoke supernatural agency to explain natural
phenomena. His clever idea of weighted ordinal representation
was developed to account for the fact that some movements
appear to be specially represented, while at the same time
others are ‘everywhere represented’ (see York and Steinberg,
2006 p. 18 Tables 1 and 2). Moreover, terms such as
‘Jacksonian epilepsy’ and ‘Jacksonian seizures’ were named (by
others) on the basis of his careful and systematic documentation
of convulsions of the nervous system, which discharge from one
part of the brain and spread to others (Hughlings Jackson, 1867,
1868), providing further evidence of Hughlings Jackson’s proposal
of somatotopic representation (and ordinal weighting) (York and
Steinberg, 2006, pp. 13–15). His ideas about compensation and
neural recovery naturally stemmed from his view of brain organization and accounted for many of the otherwise paradoxical examples of recovery he witnessed in his patients (York and
Steinberg, 2006, pp. 25–6). In many ways, Hughlings Jackson
boldly went against the current flow of physiology, where the
concept of equipotentiality of the brain was rather common (as
promulgated by Pierre Flourens, whose primary sources are written in French: York and Steinberg, 2006, p. 13), and against the
commonly accepted Cartesian dualism of that era (York and
Steinberg, 2006, p. 13).
E. A. Franz and G. Gillett
So far we have highlighted some important insights evident in
Hughlings Jackson’s observations of the brain during disease
(dissolution). However, just as important are the implications of
his ideas about the workings of the human brain during health,
reflecting its highest level processes (evolution).
Highest levels of evolution: language
and our actions
In hindsight it seems self-evident that ‘humans have a propensity
to process information in high-level meaningful units (unified
wholes) where possible, reflecting a built-in economy of information processing mechanisms’ (Franz, 2010, p.17). But this requires
an appreciation of basic sensorimotor interactions with the world
around us, without which we cannot reasonably postulate higher
level networks that enable non-automatic, but nevertheless
effective, adaptations of human organisms to a complex and
ever-changing environment.
Consistent with the framework offered by Hughlings Jackson,
recent research on embodied cognition emphasizes pre-existing
sensorimotor function as the basis of higher order cognitive
(i.e. conceptual) processes which underlie our complex actions
(Glenberg and Kaschack, 2002; Franz, 2010; Franz and
McCormick, 2010). When we relate language to the use we
make of speech in everyday life, we see a doctrine famously associated with Ludwig Wittgenstein—that ‘the meaning of a word is
its use in the language’ (Wittgenstein, 1953, #43; references are
usually by paragraph number thus: #nn) or ‘an utterance is or is
not a proposition according as it is used’ (Hughlings Jackson,
1879, p. 210) apparently making the same claim. Hughlings
Jackson formulated the thesis that speech and mentation were
closely interrelated through ‘propositional function’ whereby the
articulation of language is subsumed to serve communicative
needs and is thereby related to a wider context of action and
response (Fullinwinder, 1983, p. 153). He remarked ‘words serve
us during reasoning; they are necessarily required in all abstract
thought’ (Jackson, 1884, p. 704). Therefore, Hughlings Jackson
grasped, in nascent form, the insight that was to become associated with the work of Alexandr Luria, one of the greatest neuropsychologists of the 20th century: ‘higher mental processes are
formed and take place on the basis of speech activity’ (Luria,
1973, p. 93–4). That idea is here extended in two ways: (i) the
thesis that language is involved in facilitating all cognition and
therefore also the coordination of action (Glenberg and Kaschak
2002; Franz and McCormick, 2010); and (ii) the binding of higher
order re-representations into meaningful packages is used in the
processes ‘within conscious activity whose regulation takes place
through the intimate participation of speech’(Luria, 1973, p. 94).
The complex integrated functions of the lower levels of sensorimotor networks that often reveal themselves in tasks of higher
cognition seem to build on the ‘complex multidimensional matrix
of different cues and connections’ that words provide for human
agents (Luria, 1973, p. 307). These key thoughts linking speech,
propositional function and thought would have warmed the
cockles of Hughlings Jackson’s evolutionary heart and would
have appealed to his constant search for theoretical integration
Hughlings Jackson’s evolutionary neurology
within the richness of his clinical data, particularly with regard to
the importance he placed on findings of aphasia to inform a wider
understanding of human psychology.
Contemporary neuroimaging:
adapting to our social
environment
Extending Hughlings Jackson’s basic model of brain organization
to explaining the role of functional brain networks in high-level
cognition and social interactions also brings coherent meaning, in
our view, to myriad contemporary findings based on brain imaging. Many of these findings ostensibly pose contradictions rather
than unified models but we believe they can be usefully informed
and integrated by the evolutionary and developmental framework
that Hughlings Jackson favoured. It is in that spirit that we explore
some of the findings in contemporary brain imaging literature that
are seemingly controversial and paradoxical until viewed in light of
Hughlings Jackson’s model, which makes them look more explicable. Here we sketch three areas on the brain—(right) temporoparietal junction, superior temporal sulcus, and inferior frontal
gyrus—as examples in which an integrating framework of the
type Hughlings Jackson offered will greatly enhance ongoing
theory and research in cognitive neuropsychology.
Right temporoparietal junction
Research into the neural mechanisms thought to underlie people’s
reasoning about mental states and beliefs has recently implicated
the temporoparietal junction on the right side of the brain (right
temporoparietal junction) [Brodmann area (BA) 39] as an area
selective for belief attribution in tasks involving moral judgements
(Young and Saxe, 2008, 2009). For example, using functional
MRI, Young and Saxe (2009) reported increases in the response
of right temporoparietal junction with influences from beliefs relevant to exculpation of an agent who has accidentally caused
harm. In related work, Benedetti et al. (2009) asserted that empathy, a high-level process involving affective and cognitive components, can be further ‘dissected’ (p. 154) into component
processes, which they suggest involve theory of mind and expectancies of others’ emotional responses. That study pointed to impaired performance in people with schizophrenia on tasks
involving theory of mind and empathy, together with neural responses on functional MRI, which differed from normal controls in
areas of the right posterior superior temporal lobe (BA 22, 42), left
temporoparietal junction and temporal pole (BA 38, 39), along
with some structural anomalies in the medial prefrontal areas
found to be crucial for social cognition (BA 10). Other researchers
implicate these areas in intermodal sensory and perceptual processing where apparent conflict exists (Papeo et al., 2010).
Using completely different tasks, other functional MRI research
has focused on the right temporoparietal junction in relation to
effects of musical improvization (involving the generation of novel
musical-motor sequences). Berkowitz and Ansari (2010) demonstrated that, during improvization, musicians showed marked
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deactivation of the right temporoparietal junction whereas
non-musicians did not. The authors implicated the involvement
of right temporoparietal junction in an attentional network operating on bottom-up sensory information. In this manner, deactivation might be related to inhibition of bottom-up attention so
that top-down and goal-related attention can better operate.
Hughlings Jackson’s model suggests that we should look at integration or evolution whereby higher level representation gathers
together information in situations where simple responses will not
suffice. In other words, there is high-level responsivity to real-time
constraints and complex information processes involving many different inputs, all of which have factored into the ideational representations guiding behaviour. He would plausibly have seen
practiced musicians as having evolved higher level patterns and
therefore not needing to attend to what they had already produced to initiate ‘novel’ and musical improvizations. Thus, his
model potentially integrates the puzzling diversity of roles vested
in the relatively circumscribed brain area, right temporoparietal
junction (strategically positioned at the junction of visual, sensorimotor, auditory and memory-related brain regions) by noting the
need for inclusive re-integration of current contextual material and
pre-existing data patterns in responding to a complex situation. In
making that inference we are extending Hughlings Jackson’s
framework to neurocognitive data that go a long way beyond
his own work on aphasia and epilepsy, even though the same
evolutionary re-representational (at higher or more integrated
and inclusive levels) principles apply. Indeed, many contemporary
brain scientists are actively studying evolved systems in the human
brain that are specialized for understanding of others and social
interactions. Hughlings Jackson’s framework would analyse these
in terms of integrative re-representation of sensorimotor and perceptual data from other human beings wherein we use ‘the service
of words’ (propositionally but subconsciously) in meaningful interactions (Hughlings Jackson, 1878, p. 323).
Superior temporal sulcus
Within a similar context of theory of mind, one might consider
another complicated brain area, often referred to as the region of
the superior temporal sulcus, which involves cortex within the
sulcus and adjacent surfaces including the middle temporal
gyrus. Earlier studies on monkeys with bilateral lesions to this
region revealed deficits in discriminating between angles of eye
gaze, and right superior temporal sulcus lesions are thought to
be the basis of prosopagnosia (Campbell et al., 1990). Later functional MRI studies revealed posterior superior temporal sulcus
region activation with passive viewing of gaze shifts (Hoffman
and Haxby, 2000). However, Materna et al. (2008) questioned
whether activation of the posterior superior temporal sulcus
region reflects general processing of directional cues or specifically,
eye gaze, reporting that the bilateral areas surrounding and including posterior superior temporal sulcus are activated in response to
general direction processing relevant to shared attention, even
when the cue was finger pointing without eye gaze. As others
have pointed out, there is a segregated representation of the biological motion of body parts in the posterior temporal cortex
(including eyes, mouth and hands; Pelphrey et al., 2005), a finding
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closely related to earlier studies showing cells in the superior temporal sulcus region that are responsive to perceived emotions
(Peelen et al., 2010) and moving hands and faces but not to
inanimate objects (Frith and Frith, 1999, pp. 1693–4). Hughlings
Jackson might have been deeply suspicious of over-localizing or
modularizing of the highly complex functions involved given his
suggestion that ‘the highest centres – physical basis of mind or
consciousness—. . .represent innumerable different impressions and
movements of all parts of the body, although very indirectly’
(Hughlings Jackson, 1884, p. 703).
The collected findings essentially reveal a highly elaborated
system that allows the human organism to develop social cognition by drawing on basic sensorimotor processes involved in detecting biological motion and integrating the results with internally
originating proprioceptive and motor information. This would
make sense of Frith and Frith’s (1999) link between mentalizing
and the dorsal action system, if we take account of the need for
human beings to locate themselves in a personal and interpersonal
space as the ‘where’ of their social being. Here again, Jackson’s
model directs us to the levels of evolved integration needed to
serve neurocognitive functions intrinsic to our human adaptation
to a complex life-world. As a result, the diversity of areas and
contributory processes discussed by contemporary researchers
can be usefully stitched together.
Inferior frontal gyrus
One of the most influential theories of the neural basis of action
recognition is the concept of a mirror neuron system. The theory
developed out of findings in monkeys that revealed discharges of
neurons within the ventral premotor and rostral inferior parietal
lobe both when the monkey performed an action and when it
observed a similar action performed by an ‘other’ (Rizzolatti and
Craighero, 2004). Human homologues of this mirror neuron
system, which usually includes the left inferior frontal gyrus as a
primary area (together with other areas such as the inferior parietal lobule) have been identified on the basis of neuroimaging
studies, extending the mirror neuron system framework to account
for the ability of a human observer to understand ‘what’ actions
are being carried out by another person (Keysers and Gazzola,
2006), and even ‘why’ those actions are carried out (Gallese
and Goldman, 1998). Earlier studies initially revealed a representation of body parts including face, head and parts of the limbs in
the same brain area(s), again reminiscent of Hughlings Jackson’s
basic notion that sensorimotor representations become
re-represented and re-re-represented in more complex networks
underlying real-life processes of social interaction and communication. It would not be surprising if all complex brain networks active
during social interactions have, at their basis, simple sensorimotor
representations of the human body (and especially the face).
Ramsey and Hamilton (2010), discussing the idea of action perception and the attribution of goals to others, supports the view of
an evolved integrated re-representation system that incorporates
sensorimotor patterns from both inner and outer perceptual fields
into wider adaptive functional assemblies that also use information
about object properties, actions and mental state inferences
E. A. Franz and G. Gillett
processed in areas beyond those usually included in the mirror
neuron system.
Perception and self
Hughlings Jackson’s ideas on the relation between language and
thought led to further development of his evolutionary framework. He remarked ‘words are required for thinking, for most of
our thinking at least, but the speechless man is not wordless; there
is an automatic and unconscious or subconscious service of
words . . . the process of perception in the speechless, not wordless,
man may be defective in the sense of being inferior from lack of
cooperation of speech: it is not itself in fault, it is left unaided’
(Hughlings Jackson, 1878, p. 323). He expanded these remarks in
a footnote: ‘energising of lower, more organised, nervous arrangements, although unattended by any sort of conscious state, is
essential for, and leads to, particular energisings of the highest
and least organised—the now-organising—nervous arrangements,
which last mentioned organising is attended by consciousness’
(Hughlings Jackson, 1878, p. 323).
Taken together, these remarks point towards the thoughts
explored by Lev Vygotsky and the neuropsychology of Luria and
the work of current theorists of embodied cognition. Vygotsky remarked of language and thought ‘the conception of word meaning
as a unit of both generalizing thought and social interchange is of
incalculable value for the study of thought and language’
(Vygotsky, 1962. p. 7). To the quotes from Luria above we can
perhaps add, ‘the realization that word meaning is the fundamental
tool of thinking was crucial to . . . the description of the psychological structure of thinking as a whole’ (Luria, 1973, p. 326).
Hughlings Jackson also sketched, in outline at least, the complex
and mutually facilitatory relationship between thought and language as is shown in his understanding of the use of ‘I’, the
first person pronoun. ‘I am awake now but in my sleep I was
dreaming. . . . The I’s and the I’s, the same for a grammarian, symbolize two different persons for the student of mental diseases. I,
we may call him B, is I, we may call him A, minus the use of the
higher nervous arrangements of the higher centres (dissolution),
and plus increased activity of the next lower, Evolution remaining.’
(Hughlings Jackson, 1889, p. 499).
By using ‘I’ and ‘I’ (italicized) Hughlings Jackson was able, in an
elegant way, to discuss the varying modes of self-attributive cognitive processes according to their level of integration and sophistication. This idea is ripe for application to the findings in
blindsight and other conditions involving partial informational
access by the conscious patient and disconnexional defects including the neural disruptions of callosotomy. Hughlings Jackson’s observations about actual multiplicity in the use of ‘I’ prefigures
contemporary thinking about the dynamic ‘I’, the multiple components of self-attribution and the sense of self, and the constructed neurocognitive nature of the self (Metzinger, 2004;
Northoff and Bamphol, 2004; Gillett, 2008).
Unlike Hughlings Jackson, many human beings (among them
some prominent philosophers) have tended naively to regard ‘I’
as a simple reference to a Cartesian inner substance. Hughlings
Jackson, however, always reflected on his observations in the clinic
Hughlings Jackson’s evolutionary neurology
and related them to evolutionary and ontogenetic thinking so that
they represented far more than mere data; they were insights into
human cognition and its neuroscientific underpinnings, carefully
integrated according to a theoretical framework that focused on
the aspects of our function that we call higher, or mental, or
conscious, and these insights enhance our understanding of
human neuropsychology. Hughlings Jackson’s integrative approach enables us to consider brain networks as acting in concerted and evolved ways to lift our voluntary activity out of the
domain of the mechanistic and automatic.
Finally, we briefly comment on Hughlings Jackson’s discussion of
emotion as re-representing ‘the parts of the body concerned in different emotional manifestations’ (Jackson, 1884, p. 704) as a further
example of the framework he favoured. It prefigured the somatic,
and action-oriented focus of William James’s account of emotion,
and also pointed forward to Damasio’s work on the role of emotion
and the action system in human consciousness and deliberation
(Damasio, 1994). The idea that action is responsive to increasingly
integrated patterns of sensorimotor representations, lies at the heart
of an informed theory of human and animal cognition.
Conclusions
Hughlings Jackson’s last writings and lectures on neuroscience
date from 100 years ago, but truly deserve the adage ‘100
years young’. We have outlined his basic model of evolved brain
function that other writers in this issue have linked so ably to
Herbert Spencer. We then outlined how Hughlings Jackson’s
ideas apparently influenced other more recent researchers and
theorists, and we used his concept of evolved brain function to
address some contentious areas in contemporary cognitive neuroscience. Hughlings Jackson’s view was that human consciousness
brings us to ‘the climax of nervous evolution’ by using the highest
levels of integrated information processing to play a pivotal role in
action, memory, reason and emotion. That integration fits us
uniquely for the demands of life in a world that we have utterly
changed from the state of nature in which, as a species, we
evolved. Through representation and re-representation, always
combining and recombining inputs of various types, and the learning we do as individuals, particularly its condensed forms gained
through our ability to ‘propositionalize’ or use language, we have
developed what we call mental function of a complexity that
vastly outstrips our nearest evolutionary forebears such that
some of the philosophers of earlier ages were unable to see any
continuity between us and them. Hughlings Jackson saw both the
continuities and differences and by carefully observing and reflecting on the dissolution of neural function in those patients that fate
and disease put in his way, indicated a direction that, if diligently
followed, makes sense of the babel of voices in contemporary
theoretical neuroscience.
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