{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.029743589743589743, 'fraction_numerical': 0.017435897435897435, 'mean_word_length': 5.337662337662338, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Neurochemistry and Sherrington's Enchanted Loom

The enchanted loom is a figurative description of the brain at work, which appears in Sir Charles Sherrington's (1940, 1951) book 'Man on His Nature', based on his Gifford Lectures of 1937-8. A later Gifford lecturer (Young 1978) described Sherrington as the father of neuroscience, and I find that his metaphor of the loom, though well-known, is more often quoted than understood; it appeared recently as the title of a televised children's lecture. Here I am using it as a thread to link some of Sherrington's interests, including especially the historical and the chemical; the chemical have received disproportionately little attention by other commentators. Sherrington is honoured as a pioneer neurophysiologist; his humanism and his creative thought nurtured electrophysiology and electrophysiologists who, in their tributes to him, have not always noted the chemical components in his work. the name of neurochemistry.