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By what means are these adaptations made? What is the mechanism through which adequate responses are made to the stimuli received by the ceptors?
Over these organs the thyroid, the adrenals, the hypophysis the contact ceptors have no control. Prolonged laboratory experimentation seems to prove this postulate. This is a statement of far-reaching importance and is the key to an explanation of many chronic diseases diseases which are associated with the intense stimulation of the distance ceptors in human relations.
In many instances, however, the distance-ceptor stimuli are strong, have the advantage of a lowered threshold, and therefore compete successfully with the immediate and present stimuli of the contact ceptors. In such cases we have the interesting phenomenon of physical injury without resultant pain or muscular response.
We have just stated that by means of the distance ceptors animals and man orientate themselves to their distant environment. As a result of the stimulation of the special senses chase and escape are effected, fight is conducted, food is secured, and mates are found. It is obvious, therefore, that the distance ceptors are the primary cause of continuous and exhausting expenditures of energy.
Memory is awakened by symbols which represent any of the objects or forces associated with the act recalled. Spoken and written words, pictures, sounds, may stimulate the brain patterns formed by previous stimulation of the distance ceptors; while touch, pain, temperature, pressure, may recall previous contact-ceptor stimuli.
The contact ceptors do not at all promote the expenditure of energy in the chase or in fight, in the search for food or for mates. Since the distance ceptors control these activities, one would expect to find that they control also those organs whose function is the production of energizing internal secretions.
The whole machine will be shaken and weakened, the batteries and weakest parts being the first to become impaired and destroyed, the length of usefulness of the automobile being correspondingly limited. We have shown that the effects upon the body mechanism of the action of the various ceptors is in relation to the response made by the brain to the stimuli received.
On the other hand, stimuli applied to contact ceptors lead to short, quick discharges of nervous energy. The child puts his hand in the fire and there is an immediate and complete response to the injuring contact; he sees a pot of jam on the pantry shelf and a long train of continued activities are set in motion, leading to the acquisition of the desired object.
The Venus fly-trap responds to as delicate a stimulus as do any of the contact ceptors of animals, and the motor activity resulting from the stimulus is as complex. To an insect-like touch the plant responds; to a rough contact there is no response; that is, the motor mechanism of the plant has become attuned to only such stimuli as simulate the contact of those insects which form its diet.
If the environmental impacts are repeated with such frequency that the brain-cells have no time for restoration between them, the energy of the cells becomes exhausted and a condition of shock results. Every action of the body may thus be analyzed into a stimulation of ceptors, a consequent discharge of brain-cell energy, and a final adaptive activation of the appropriate part.
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