IUBio

Sir Charles S. Sherrington query

kevin k-mckenna at nwu.edu
Mon May 20 14:18:50 EST 1996


In article <menica-a-2005961934480001 at ppp39.micronet.fr>,
menica-a at micronet.fr (Armando Menicacci) wrote:

> As a musicologist, medicine and biology are not my cup of tea: i'm looking
> for information about a very important physiologist: Charles Scott
> Sherrington (1857-1952, nobel prize 1932)
> I'm looking for someone to tell me where he spoke about _common final
> way_. Apparently he said everything is movement (muscular or chemical).
> I'd really appreciate any help, Sherrington books are very rare in France.

To neuroscientists and physiologists, Sherrington is indeed a figure of
enormous stature, probably even in France ;-)

Sherrington was the man who coined the terms neuron and synapse (from the
Greek to grasp). This is the site at which nerve cells make functional
contact. He also introduced the term motor unit which refers to the motor
neuron and the muscle fibers it innervates. His primary work was focused
on spinal reflexes. He and his colleagues identified decerebrate rigidity
and its reflexive origins, the stretch reflex, spinal locomotor patterns,
habituation of spinal reflexes, and reciprocal inhibition (which he said
allowed a "singleness of action" of the nervous system even in the face of
competing stimuli). 

Sherrington's phrase is final common path. It refers to the motor neurons
in the spinal cord. They innervate the muscles of the body and thus are
the final stage of the nervous system involved in the control of movement.
The phrase emphasizes the fact that all of the processes of the brain
concerned with movement must eventually converge onto the motor neuron.
The phrase occurs in his 1906 text, The Integrative Action of the Nervous
System (2nd ed., Yale University Press 1947).

I'm not sure what aspects of Sherrington's work interests you, but a
popular quote (and perhaps the one you are referring to) from Sherrington
is: "To move is all mankind can do and for such, the sole executant is
muscle, whether in whispering a syllable or felling a forest."
(Sherrington, 1947).


  
Further Readings:

C.S. Sherrington, Problems of Muscular Receptivity, Linacre Lecture,
Nature (London), June 21 and 28, 1924. Reprinted in D. Denny-Brown, ed.
Selected Writings of Sir Charles Sherrington (New York: Paul B. Hoeber,
1940), pp. 385-390. 

John F. Fulton, Sherrington's Impact on Neurophysiology, British Medical
Journal, Vol. II, (1947), pp. 807-810.



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