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Show Keeping Up Wi&cienle Science Service. WNU Service. Weird Tests of Nervous System Made in Cellar Rockefeller Foundation Aids Study in London By DONALD CALEY LONDON. New light on the working- of the sympathetic, sympa-thetic, or involuntary, nervous system is being shed by a remarkable re-markable research carried on at the National Hospital for Nervous Nerv-ous Diseases here. . Until some of the results of the research are published in scientific. Journals, in the near future, the neurologists conducting it wish to preserve strict anonymity. The reason rea-son that public attention here has been focused on the hospital and Its researches is that the Rockefeller Rockefel-ler foundation has offered provisional provi-sional grants totaling $(300,000 to-y to-y wards new laboratories and the endowment en-dowment of their work. The research on the sympathetic nervous system Is being carried on In a subterranean cellar which at one time belonged to a convent. Makes Heart Beat. It Is the sympathetic nervous system which is responsible for the beating of the heart, for the movements move-ments of the digestive organs and for all other bodily processes that are performed without conscious effort. ef-fort. It is also concerned with the various links between the emotions and physical reactions, such as be-- be-- tween fear and the bristling of hair which In human beings Is chiefly noticeable in the effect we call "gooseskin." Little Is as yet known as to the details of bow and why the activity of this invol-ontary invol-ontary nervous system varies among normal human beings that Is, for instance, why one of two brothers may be much more "highly "high-ly strung" than another. It is toward the solution of these and many other allied problems that this research is directed. The essence of the method lies In the measuring of reactions of the sympathetic sym-pathetic nerves through recording changes In the blood-vessels, whose size is governed by the sympathetic system. In practice, the thickness of a finger, fin-ger, which alters with the expansion expan-sion and contraction of Its multitude multi-tude of minute blood-vessels, serves as the criterion. The changes of volume are naturally extremely small, but they are magnified by the apparatus a pneumatic system being be-ing connected at one end to a sealed rubber fingerstall and at the other to an arrangement of mirrors and are finally recorded photographically, photo-graphically, along with a time-scale, on a moving roll of bromide paper. Wet Feet Compulsory. An Important feature of these experiments ex-periments Is that the subject Is made to keep his feet In warm water. This neutralizes the ordinary ordi-nary effect of slight changes In room temperature. Normally these changes cause frequent slight varia-. varia-. tlons in the sympathetic and vascular vas-cular systems, and such variations would affect the accuracy of measurements meas-urements of other sympathetic reactions. re-actions. Numerous different tests can, of course, be made on each subject. Chief among these are the reactions to pain, usually Induced by pinpricks pin-pricks or pinches. Experiments have also been extensively ex-tensively made with subjects some of whose sympathetic nerves have tieen severed by accidents or disease, dis-ease, or whose brains have been Injured, In-jured, as by the removal of brain tumors. |