Brain 2006 129(2):551-554; doi:10.1093/brain/awh731
© The Author (2006). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Guarantors of Brain. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org
THE CIRCUITRY OF THE HUMAN SPINAL CORD: ITS ROLE IN MOTOR CONTROL AND MOVEMENT DISORDERS
By Emmanuel Pierrot-Deseilligny and David Burke
2005
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Price: £110.00
ISBN: 978-0-521-82581-8
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
‘One small step for man’
In 1906 Charles
Sherrington wrote: ‘There is the coordination which a
reflex action introduces when it makes an effector organ responsive
to excitement of a receptor, all other parts of the organism
being supposed indifferent to and indifferent for that reaction.
In this grade of coordination the reflex is taken apart, as
if separable from other reflex actions. This is the "simple
reflex". A simple reflex is probably a purely abstract conception,
because all parts of the nervous system are connected together
and no part of it is probably ever capable of reaction without
affecting and being affected by various other parts and it is
a system certainly never absolutely at rest. But the simple
reflex is a convenient, if not a probable fiction’ (Sherrington,
1906
).
To paraphrase Sherrington, we would now emphasize that reflex action and the control of movement in general are the results of coordinated activity . . . [Full Text of this Article]
Roger Lemon
Sobell Department of Motor Neuroscience and Movement Disorders Institute of Neurology, University College London London, UK
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