MAY 1956

THE HARDWIRED BRAIN--"How big a role does heredity play in behavior? In the lower vertebrates, at least, many features of visual perception--the sense of direction and location in space, the perception of motion and the like--are built into the organism and do not have to be learned. The whole idea of instincts and the inheritance of behavior traits is becoming much more palatable than it was 15 years ago, when we lacked a satisfactory basis for explaining the organization of inborn behavior. Every animal comes into the world with inherited behavior patterns of its species. Much of its behavior is a product of evolution, just as its biological structure is. --R. W. Sperry" [Editors' note: Roger Wolcott Sperry was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1981.]

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