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Though electro-convulsive therapy (E.C.T.) is one of our most useful treatments, its mode of action is still largely unknown, and this ignorance is preventing us from making it more successful and more widely applicable. Among its possible modes of action is the possibility of its having some “activating” action on the basal, and more particularly on the hypothalamic, structures. Such activation might be expected to show in the psycho-galvanic response (P.G.R.), and we have therefore investigated something of the relationship between them. Many of the facts that would justify this investigation need not be given here as they have been reviewed in previous publications (Ashby and Bassett, 1950; Ashby, 1952(b)).
At the moment, cybernetics cannot point to any established triumph for, as a science, it is very young and is being applied to psychiatry in few laboratories. Nevertheless, I hope to show that there are good reasons for thinking that its relation to psychiatry is close, and that its application will eventually yield a rich harvest.
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