Note 80 — Chapter VIII · THE INTERNAL CONDITIONS OF EMOTION.

In his lectures on Hysteria (Vol. i., Lecture 21), Pitres incidentally inquires into the existence of encephalic centres of the affective states, and concludes that “the molecular changes corresponding to the activity of the cellular elements shaken by the passions, radiate in every direction, stimulate or depress the excitability of adjacent elements, rebound on the motor and sensitive centres, and on the originatory nuclei of the visceral nerves, and finally determine the state of emotion, i.e., the psycho-physiological state which is the special expression of the reaction of the nervous centres to psychic excitations.”