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University Daily Kansan Wednesday, Nov. 29, 1961
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Scientists Study a Bunch of Drunk Cats
By Delos Smith
NEW YORK — (UPI) — Because of the weird thoughts and behavior of drunks, science has always thought intoxicating beverage messed up the brain. You can see why scientists would. No guess could seem more factual.
THIS ELECTRICAL activity is in the so-called "brain waves" which are measured and recorded by the electroencephalograph. Normal patterns of "brain waves" show the parts of that indispensable organ are communicating freely and all is well at the summit.
Then imagine the surprise of the scientists who first tried to prove the guess anatomically (back in 1940). They couldn't! The electrical activity of the brains of drunks seemed more or less normal, though slowed a little.
Naturally scientists didn't believe in that first failure. It seemed obvious that something had been wrong with the experiment. But other scientists recorded the "brain waves" of other drunks and unfailingly got the more or less normal result.
There's been some scientific brooding over it since, and now in 1961 come Drs. J. L. Story, E. Eidelberg
Agnew Discusses Pornography
A book should be "taken as a whole" when determining whether is pornographic, L. R. C. Agnew, professor of medical history, said yesterday at the Faculty Forum.
He quoted from the Obscenity Publication Act of 1959 of Great Britain which states a book is obscene "if its effect...if taken as a whole is such as to deprave and corrupt persons."
Prof. Agnew quoted an American book on pornography which differentiated between "hard core obsessivity" and works of literary merit.
HE SAID AN ENTIRE BOOK instead of isolated passages and words should determine the obscenity of a book.
The book states that "hard core obscenity" is written only to stimulate erotic responses in the reader and has no literary merit.
PROF. AGNEW said the difficult problem was who should determine if a book was pornographic and where the cut-off point should be.
He said control could go too far. He cited Ireland as an example of too much control. He showed four booklets of banned books in Ireland which includes books by Ernest Hemingway and Arthur Miller.
He said we should first agree that some book should be banned and by what criteria it should be banned. He added he was against too much control.
Tanganyika becomes a free nation next week. Can the "moderates" and the tyranny of hunger, poverty and ignorance? Or will the African extremists rampage—and turn the country into another Congo? Read this week's Post.
and J. D. French of the University of California, Los Angeles, with an idea of how to change the result. This involved getting a bunch of cats drunk.
THE ELECTRODES which pick up the "brain waves" for the electroencephalograph to record are attached to the skull. The electrical activity in the deep parts of the brain can escape this recording and it could well be that alcohol only messes up those deep parts, the scientists figured.
The normal patterns of "brain waves" in these deep brain structures were recorded, and then the cats were made drunk and drunken by measured steps until they were at the passed-out stage. This was done by injecting an alcoholic solution, somewhat stronger than the usual highball, into them.
They implanted recording electrodes deep into the brains of cats with wire "leads" coming out through the skull. When the animals recovered from this surgery, they seemed to be normally behaving cats.
AND WHAT DO you know! Even heavily intoxicating doses of alcohol did not "cause any major changes in the spontaneous electrical activity" in any of four deep brain structures, the scientists reported to a technical journal published by the American Medical Association.
However, there were small an regional changes which were comparable to the "slowing" of activity which the 1940 scientists noted in the surface "brain waves" of human drunks. The brain centers which note body sensations and visual information were "markedly depressed" in responses to nerve impulses.
Health Insurance
The scientists suggested that alcohol could depress the responses of some of the brain's inter-communications while leaving others alone. This, they said, "is probably involved" in muddling the brains of people who have had too much to drink.
NEW YORK—(UPI)—The number of persons covered by some form of health insurance and the amount of benefits paid reached new highs last year, the Health Insurance Council reported.
Coverage increased by 4.1 million during 1960 to reach a total of nearly 132 million persons. Benefit payments amounted to more than $4.8 billion, up $500 million over 1959.
Official Bulletin
Catholic Daily Mass; 6:30 a.m., St.
John's Church, 13th & Kentucky.
TODAY
Foreign Students: The deadline for reserving bus space for the Truman visit on Friday has been extended until 9 a.m. tomorrow, when in reservation forms
SUA Bridge Lessons: 7 p.m. 360 Kansas Union. Instruction, Larry Bodle,
TOMORROW
Episcopal Holy Communion and Lunch:
12 noon, Centertown, House.
Der Deutsche Verein trifft sich am Donnerstag, den 30. November, um fuenführ in 11 Fraser. Herrr Dr. Schmaeling gibt eine Einleitung hoem Boerspel. Wir werden "das Klopfeichen" von Heinrich Boell lesen und besprechen.
ADS-GAX Meeting: 7:30 p.m. English Union, Speaker, Dean Barton Marshi
Christian Science Organization: 7:30
v.m., Danforth Chapel.
Episcopal Evening Prayer. 9:30 p.m.
Danforth Chapel.
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