The present experiments are concerned with further evidence of the epileptogenic properties of chronic partially isolated (denervated) monkey cerebral cortex.
Marshall Hall29 in 1841 remarked, "The first effect of injury done to the nervous system is a diminution of its functions; whilst the second or ulterior effect is the augmentation of those functions." In 1880 Claude Bernard3 stated, "The excitability of all tissues seems to augment when they are separated from the nervous influences which dominate them." In subsequent years there followed a wide series of observations, largely on excitable peripheral structures, confirming and expanding the opinions of Hall and Bernard. In 1939 Cannon,9 in his Hughlings Jackson lecture at the Montreal Neurological Institute, presented his Law of Denervation as follows: "When in a series of efferent neurones a unit is destroyed an increased irritability to chemical agents develops in the isolated structure or structures, the effects