FAILURE OF ABNORMAL CEREBROSPINAL FLUID PRESSURE TO INFLUENCE CEREBRAL FUNCTION

Abstract

THE CLINICAL and experimental association of high cerebrospinal fluid pressures with disorders of the central nervous system has influenced the diagnostic and therapeutic thinking of investigators and clinicians for over half a century. Meyers'¹ critical evaluation of the physiologic experimentation designed to study this relation using experimental animals casts grave doubts on the assumption that there was a necessary association between moderate elevations in pressure and symptomatology. Previously, Browder and Meyers² had presented convincing clinical evidence that the orthodox mechanistic thinking in this regard was unsound and unsafe. Nevertheless, studies have since appeared attributing reactions to low pressure³ as well as to high pressure,⁴ and the assumption of a causative relation between high and low pressures and disorders of the central nervous system, at least under certain circumstances, remains widespread among informed experts.