course of thought

He believed that neurons served as storage units for mental impressions such as thoughts and sensations, which combined to form our experience of being alive: “To know the brain is equivalent to ascertaining the material course of thought and will,” he wrote.

Often, of an evening, when he sat at the window, his desk and papers before him, he would cease reading or writing, rest his chin on his hand, and deliver himself up to I know not what course of thought; but that it was perturbed and exciting might be seen in the frequent flash and changeful dilation of his eye.

My spirits were so disarranged, my nerves so clamorous in their confusion, that no course of thought, speech, or action presented itself.

I can no longer find any logical marks to assist me in tracking out his course of thought.

Let the attention of the solicitor, for instance, busied on the points of an intricate case, be perforce diverted to another matter, there is lost from that case just the time diverted, and a little extra to allow for the mind which returns to any interrupted course of thought, never returning to it exactly at the point at which it was forced to leave it.