Conclusion

Abstract

We have concluded our survey of the factual evidence pertaining to disturbances of the higher cortical functions in the presence of local brain lesions, collected in the course of our investigations over a number of years. We have attempted to describe them as systematically as possible, on the assumption that this would enable us to examine some of the important theoretical problems connected with the principles of human brain activity as well as some of the practical problems in the diagnosis of circumscribed lesions of the cerebral cortex. We adopted as our starting point the idea of a dynamic, systematic localization of functions, originally proposed by Pavlov and subsequently developed and applied to the higher mental functions of man by Vygotskii. From the standpoint of the systematic localization of functions we regard the higher cortical processes as complex, dynamically localized, functional systems that are affected differently with lesions of different parts of the cerebral hemispheres. We are satisfied that this approach is a most productive one, both for diagnostic localization of circumscribed lesions and for the analysis of the principal ways by which the disturbed functions may be restored in patients with local brain lesions (Luria, 1948).