The Japanese journal of neuropsychology

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ArticleTitle	Neuro-evolutionary theory of Hughlings Jackson: How did he approach the problem of mind?
Language	J
AuthorList	Atsushi Yamadori
Affiliation	Formerly at Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine
Publication	Japanese Journal of Neuropsychology: 31 (2), 90-98, 2015
Received
Accepted
Abstract	In this lecture I briefly outlined Hughlings Jackson's theory of evolution of the central nervous system and mind. According to his idea, the central nervous system is an evolutionary system. Organic diseases involving the CNS destroys this evolutionary system in a specific pattern which is defined as dissolution. Various neurological and mental symptoms manifested by diseases can be understood as a combination of negative elements due to dissolution and positive elements due to evolution remaining. Mind also has evolutionary structure and becomes active concomitant with nervous activities of the four evolutionary hierarchical layers in the highest centers. His insight that phenomena of mind can be understood only by strictly separating them from the nervous processes and yet at the same time by studying them as concomitant state of the nervous processes opened the way to study mind as a single evolutionary phenomenon and not as the aggregates of cognitive subsystems. I believe his "neuro-philosophy" is one of the most important ideas in neurospychology and worth studying seriously.
Keywords	evolution, dissolution, concomitance of nervous and mental states, consciousness, neurophilosophy