The Philosophical Review/Volume 1/Summary: Bastian - On the Neural Processes underlying Attention and Volition
After a short statement of the doctrines of attention advanced by British philosophers, the author discusses the "essential nature of attention." He does not find himself able to give any new explanation of the nature of attention in cases of sudden impressions, but quotes approvingly Maudsley's dictum that "Attention is the arrest of the transformation of energy for a moment, the maintenance of a particular tension." Voluntary attention is a complex process, and includes volition. The "motor" processes of attention are due to associations of sensations; attention as such belongs to sensor processes, but the molecular activities of the sensor element well over into the motor mechanism. Wundt's view that the frontal lobes are apperception centres is fanciful and speculative. The process of attention takes place in each of the cortical sensorial centres, and attention is accordingly visual, auditory, kinesthetic, etc. In voluntary attention, often called internal volition, it may be said that the thoughts invariably follow one another according to laws of habit or association. When one train of thought supersedes another, we call the sequence an effort of will; but here, as in regular association, one thought supersedes another in virtue of its superior force. The occasions for exercise of voluntary movements spring up as ordinary links in the chain formed by an association of ideas. Between the cerebral reflexes known as ideo-motor acts and simple voluntary acts there is no line to be drawn. In deliberative acts the sense of effort is associated with the conflict of ideas and motives, and belongs to the sensor centres. The act of willing consists essentially in a consent to the occurrence of a movement, the movement itself being prefigured by certain revived impressions, visual, or auditory, or kinesthetic. The activity of these sensor centres awakes a corresponding activity in the motor centres of the bulb or spinal cord. There is no reason for postulating motor centres in the cortex; the so-called motor centres of the Rolandic tract are of the kinesthetic type and intimately connected with visual, auditory, and other sensor centres. The process of attention is accordingly essentially sensory, and volition, representing certain phases in the association of ideas, is likewise sensory. The motor processes taking place in the bulb and spinal cord are, however, outside of consciousness.