John Eccles Reihenfolge der Bücher

In the brain information is coded into sequences of impulses which are unit responses travelling from neurones or nerve cells along nerve fibres. The neural code is equivalent to a Morse code of dots only in a great variety of temporal patterns and with thousands of connections in parallel. Fig. lA is a diagram of Figure 1: Drawing of Four Neurones of the Cerebral Cortex. This shows the excitatory synaptic connections set up by an input fibre from the thalamus labelled (spec. aff. ), which is an enormous nucleus in the brain that provides the principal inputs to the cerebral cortex. This spec. aff. fibre branches profusely to make excitatory synapses on the spiny stellate cell (Sst) and on one pyramidal cell (Pyr). All three pyramidal cells receive on their spines excitatory synapses from Sst, and there is a special excitatory structure, called by Szentagothai a cartridge, formed by the synaptic endings on the apical dendrites of two pyramidal cells. All three pyramidal cells but not the Sst, send their axons out of the cerebral cortex as shown by the lower projecting arrows. The upper inset shows an enlargement of a spine synapse with synaptic vesicles in the presynaptic ending and the spine arising from a dendrite. The lower two insets show diagrammatically normal and hypertrophied spine synapses. (SZENTAGOTHAI, 1978).

Under the terms of the endowment by Lord Gifford, the Gifford Lectures have been an annual event in the University of Edin burgh since 1887, and also in three other Scottish universities. According to the will of Lord Gifford they were set up " ... to promote and diffuse the study of Natural Theology in the widest sense of that term - in other words, the knowledge of God." The assignment is for ten lectures, and I delivered them from 20 February, to 13 March, 1978. I chose the theme of the Human Mystery because I believe that it is vitally important to emphasize the great mysteries that confront us when, as scientists, we try to understand the natural world including ourselves. There has been a regrettable tendency of many scientists to claim that science is so powerful and all pervasive that in the not too distant future it will provide an explantation in principle of all phenomena in the world of nature including man, even of human consciousness in all its manifesta tions. When that is accomplished scientific materialism will then be in the position of being an unchallengable dogma accounting for all experience."