ABSTRACT
The scientific investigation of disturbances of the complex mental processes began in 1861 when the French anatomist Paul Broca described the brain of a patient who for many years had been kept in the Salpetriere Hospital because he was unable to speak, although he could understand speech. The discovery that a complex form of mental activity can be regarded as the function of a local brain area aroused unprecedented enthusiasm in neurological science. Most investigators who have examined the problem of cortical localization have understood the term function to mean the “function of a particular tissue.” In Walter Hunter’s experiments a rat in a maze achieved its goal by running a certain path, but when one element of the maze was replaced by water, the rat achieved its goal by swimming movements. Vygotsky used a simple device to construct a laboratory model of this kind of reorganization of movement.
