Vou. 107 Apri, 1948 No. 4 The Journal of Nervousand Mental Disease AN EDUCATIONAL JOURNAL OF NEUROPSYCHIATRY, FOUNDED IN 1874 ORIGINAL ARTICLES MOTILITY, BEHAVIOR AND THE BRAIN* STEREODYNAMIC ORGANIZATION AND NEURAL (CO-ORDINATES OF BEHAVIOR By Paut I. Yakov, M.D-t In spite of formal protestations to the contrary, there exists among psychiatrists a tendency to speak of human behavior as if it were “a thing in itself’—Kantian noumenon, and of the environment as if it were an abstract geometrical space coexisting with man in a sort of juxtaposition, It is assumed by inference that the evolution of man, of his behavior and of his environment is a sequence of events which measures time as if it were an abstract dimension, external to man, and to disregard the fundamental distinction between the chronometric evolution which measures time as a calendar of man’s natural his- tory, and the chronogenic evolution which makes time a concrete, consciable experience of living. Finally, the values of behavior—derived products of evolution—are mistaken for the behavior as physical phenomenon. Most empirical sciences, and biologic sciences in particular, view man as living matter, and the environment as a physical space of matter. Alll living organisms exist on our planet in a clearly definable “Presented on the program of the second annual meeting and first scientific assem- bly of the Society of Biological Psychiatry, Atlantic City, N. J., on June 15, 1947. +From the Research Unit of Walter E. Fernald State School, Waverley, Mass., and ‘The Department of Research and Training, Connecticut State Hospital, Middletown, Conn. [313]314 PAUL I. YAKOVLEV geological zone—the biosphere (Vernadsky). Living matter is the center of transformation and source of free energy in the biosphere and man, through his conséious attitude toward life, and through his work, which is his behavior, is the chief agent of planetary changes which constantly transform this geological zone of life into a new spatial, temporal and dynamic state (Le Roy; Vernadsky, 1944, 1945); in other words, man, his behavior and environmeht, represent a unitary stereodynamic system in constant evolution. This evolution not only measures time as a linear dimension, but represents time as a consciable experience of change and movement (Bergson). Be- havior is thus movement. From the primordial movement of energy metabolism between living matter and the biosphere, the behavior of all living organisms evolves in three spheres: (x) In the changes of state of energy within the organism; (2) In the change of the external form of living organisms which reflect changes in their internal states; and (3) In the changes effected by living organisms “without”—in the space of matter—their physical environment. These three spheres of movement are discernible in the behavior _ of all living organisms; however, with the evolution of the stereody- namic organization of living matter from the primordial states, such as that of unicellular organisms, to more evolved states, such as that of vertebrates and man, these three spheres become ever clearer.* With the advent of the primordial, diffuse nervous system, as in a medusa or an earthworm, the differentiation of these three spheres of movement in the total behavior of animals becomes readily dis- cernible. And with the advent of the central nervous system of ver- tebrates, the behavior differentiates clearly into three spheres of movements: (1) The sphere of visceral motility, such as to-and-fro movement of atoms in tissue and cell metabolism, respiration, circulation, incre- tion, peristalsis, secretion, excretion and like movements, largely within the body; (2) The sphere of motility of the outward expression of internal states, such as hunger, thirst, fear, rage, pleasure, grief, pain and the gamut of the so-alled emotions, literally e(x)motions, i.e, internal *The neologism—stereodynamic—is necessary to convey the indissoluble unity of structure and function (behavior) of living matter. Pierre Curie (quoted by Vernadsky, *44) spoke of states of space. Living matter in the biosphere is a state of space—a field of Diogenetic forces (Burr)—occupied by living organisms. The term—morphdynamic— could also be used to imply not only solid state of matter in the original meaning of the Greek word “stereos"—solid, but the form (“morphos”) of matter in any state.MOTILITY, BEHAVIOR AND THE BRAIN 315 motions brought out—the motor expressions of which—such as facial mimicry, vocalizations, body attitudes and postures—affect the animal but, per se, effect no change in the world of matter about it; and (3) The sphere of motility of effectuation which creates changes in the world of matter about the animal, i.e, produces work through which the animal impresses itself upon the world of matter, eg. locomotes, shapes and handles matter, using his own hody and parts of it as tools. These three spheres of motility—visceration, expression and effec- tuation—should not be looked upon as if each sphere were an inde- pendent category of behavior merely in temporal juxtaposition with the other two spheres. The behavior of a living organism is total; every heart beat, every twitch of a muscle, every movement and pos- ture is an integral part of the total behavior which evolves and pro- ceeds as a unity in time. At any given moment the behavior of a liv- ing organism represents the culmination of the evolution not only of its own behavior, but of the behavior of the species and of all liv- ing matter as a common stock of all species. ‘The sphere of visceration is the matrix of all behavior. So long as the animal viscerates—respires, assimilates, digests, circulates—it still lives and, therefore, behaves even though it may reveal not a trace of motility in the other two spheres of behavior. The motility of visceration evolves from the movement of energy metabolism be- tween the organism as living matter and the environment as physi- cal space of matter and never ceases (Vulpian). However, it con- stantly changes from the anabolic, energy-building phase to the cata- bolic, energy-spending phase. The total behavior of all living organ- isms, of even microbes and plants, oscillates between these two phases of visceration into which are inscribed the rhythms of all the pro- cesses of living—oxygen consumption, CO, production, sugar’ me- tabolism, etc—and which are in turn inscribed into rhythms of the energy metabolism of all living matter as a dynamic system—a plane- tary cenobiosis of living organisms and of their aggregates in the biosphere (Vernadsky). The other two spheres of total behavior— the motility of outward expression of internal states and the motility of locomotion and effectuation—appear to be evolutionary differ- entials of the catabolic, energy-spending phase of visceration. They represent the conversion of latent energy stored in the organism into heat and work, ic. into changes in the state of energy-matter within and without the organism. ‘The evolution of the stereodynamic organization and the differ- entiation of the behavior of vertebrates appear to parallel the changes316 PAUL I. YAKOVLEV in the basic conditions of partial weight, pressure and physicochemical equilibrium between the animal and its milieu within the biosphere. ‘The conditions of temperature, pressure and oxygen concentration in the aquatic environment vary at a slower rate and within a narrower range than they do in the terrestrial environment. Thus, the behav- ior of fish and most aquatic animals depends more or less directly on the temperature and physicochemical equilibria of the relatively temperate and stable watery environment. But, with the advent of terrestrial life and change in partial weight and pressure, the stereo- dynamic organization of vertebrates shows a change in the mode of respiration from branchial to pulmonic, and in the development of the internal medium to a large extent independent of changes in the conditions of the more variable terrestrial environment. The mode of respiration and the self-regulated homeostatic internal medium ap- pear to be the basic stereodynamic co-ordinates of the evolution of behavior of terrestrial vertebrates in the expressive and in the affective spheres. Thus, the expressive behavior of the fish, even under the most critical conditions of its internal state, is silent. But with the emer- gence of the terrestrial mode of life and of pulmonic instead of branchial respiration, the motility of emotional expression becomes enriched by the laryngeal movements of phonation. The croaking of the frogs and the hissing of reptiles already foreshadow the vocali- zation of birds and the growling, barking, braying, and so forth, of mammals; whatever the sound, all these movements of phonation express outwardly the stirrings of emotion within the animal—hunger, pain, grief, fear, rage, pleasure and the gamut of compound emo- tional states. In the subprimates, the expression of the emotional states is shared by vocalization and movements of the snout and of the hind quarters, notably the tail. Indeed, in many vertebrates, e.g., cats, dogs, the movements and postures of the hind quarters express out- wardly the emotional state of the animal often even more explicitly than movements of the foreparts. Only in man do the face and eyes acquire the dominant role.in expressive behavior in the finely modu- lated movements of mimicry. In primates, and especially man, the phonation, mimicry and the movements and postures of the fore- limbs become integrated into motor synergies of gesture-vocaliza- tion (Cobb). For example, the crude emotional vocalizations, purs- ing of lips and thumping of chest in a gorilla foreshadow the more or less articulate vocal expostulations, mimicry and gestures of sym- bolic expression of internal states in man, such as the gestures and ex- postulations of denial, approval, protestation, recognition, threat,