VITA VEGETATIVA
Vita vegetativa constitutes, in contrast to the life of relation and the animal life, that group of activities which aim to ensure the organism an effective functionality of its individual organs, as well as their reciprocal coordination for the better maintenance and exercise of vital processes. The purpose, therefore, of all vegetative functions is to secure for the individual the most favorable conditions of life for his organism.
These functions are under the control of a particular section of the nervous system: the neurovegetative system (v. VITA VEGETATIVA), which, with its diencephalic centers and with the two sections of the orthosympathetic and parasympathetic systems, contributes (in close functional connection with certain endocrine glands), together with the nervous system of relation, to the regular development of somato-psychic life.
By means of the organs entrusted with vegetative function, the organism is therefore able to provide for the phenomena of general material metabolism, through the intake, digestion, absorption (digestive apparatus and related glandular organs: liver, pancreas, etc.), the transport and storage of various products within the tissues according to their respective needs (cardiovascular apparatus), and the elimination of catabolites through the emunctories (kidney, intestine, skin). In addition to these functions, which, together with the respiratory function responsible for the normal oxygenation of the blood, contribute to the growth and preservation of the individual, it must be remembered that the group of vegetative life functions also includes the procreative function, by means of which the perpetuation of the species is ensured.
In connection with the constitution of a subject (type orthosympathicotonic and then parasympathicotonic [V. TIPO]), various pathological alterations have been increasingly delineated, such as orthosympathicopathies with excitation or paralysis of one or another section of the sympathetic system (cervical, thoracic, etc.) and orthosympathoses of sensory, vasomotor, excretory, or dystrophic type, in which an associated alteration of the endocrine glands is often present.
Moreover, in recent times (1950), Pende has identified a new morbid syndrome, diencephaloisis, whose essence would consist in an exalted and disordered activity of the diencephalic centers freed from the inhibitory influence of the higher cortical centers. According to Pende, "diencephaloisis," produced by cerebral leptomeningitis of fetal life, with external and internal hydrocephalus, particularly of the third cerebral ventricle, with its irritative, inflammatory, and degenerative phenomena of the hypothalamic centers, can explain the profound anomalies of behavior and the notable disturbances of the moral sphere found in subjects who were once defined as "born or predisposed criminals" (Lombroso). He even speaks of a "diencephalocrinogenic criminogenesis" whose importance is undoubted not only from the point of view of the individual's education but also from the social and moral standpoint, since subjects who should rather be classed among true cerebropaths cannot be considered fully responsible. These diencephalic alterations, although not yet well defined, cannot today be disregarded, since they are based on statistical grounds, having been found, through radiological-functional investigation of the skull, brain, and endocrine balance, in about 20% of children who are fully abnormal physically and mentally or abnormal only in conduct and in 47% of a group of criminals confined in the prisons of Rome.