ABSTRACT
This chapter is designed for the reader who is either not familiar with normal brain anatomy and physiology, or who would like to be reminded. Any criticism of the theory of neurological organisation espoused by the Institutes must involve a discussion of normal brain functioning. Some of the simplest organisms like the amoeba, which consists only of a single cell, have no clearly-defined brain or nerves. The feature of the vertebrate nervous system is that the brain has become a very dominating structure both in its relative size and in its organisational power. In mammals the cerebellum also receives instructions from the motor cortex lying in the fore-brain. The newborn child is capable of only a very limited repertoire of movement performance. Voluntary control of movement in humans is achieved by a strip of cerebral cortex called the primary motor cortex. All current major theories of child development accept that human behaviour is built upon a substrate of neurological reflexes.
