Few would know the name, but the London-born man who coined the terms ‘neuron’ and ‘synapse’, and first described antagonistic muscle action was born 150 years ago today.

Paul Wicks

Sir Charles Scott Sherrington was a British doctor and scientist who shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1932 with Baron Edgar Adrian, for identifying electrical activity in nerves.

Born in London in November 1857, Sherrington read medicine at Cambridge where he became interested in physiology. He graduated from St Thomas’ hospital in 1885 and embarked upon a series of unique physiological experiments, focussing in particular on the reflex arc. By studying animals whose cerebral cortices had been removed, he established that reflexes did not work in isolation and were an integrated feature of the whole organism.

Deducing knowledge about integrated systems by studying a simple unit of the system became a hallmark of his work. His research on proprioception established that animals could maintain their posture even without sensory inputs from the skin or cerebellum.

Sherrington coined several terms that define the science itself, including neuron, proprioception and synapse.

He also postulated ‘Sherrington’s law of reciprocal innervation’ which explains how antagonistic pairs of muscles (such as the bicep and tricep) coordinate their contraction and relaxation to allow fluid movement.

A series of lectures delivered at Yale in 1904 led to the publication of Integrative Action of the Nervous System, a widely used textbook in Neurology, Psychology and Medicine. The British clinician FMR Walsh said the volume, “holds a position similar to that of Newton’s Principia in physics. Here is the imprint of a scientific genius".

Much of his work in basic neuroscience paved the way for future innovations in neurosurgery, and his later work focussed on the role of neurological integration. Modern developments such as functional neuroimaging, deep brain stimulation surgery, and treatments for neurological disorders owe much to his groundwork.

Sherrington became a fellow of the Royal Society in 1893 and was its president from 1920 to 1925. He was knighted in 1922. He died aged 94 having worked in laboratory science for over 50 years.

Reference

Pearce JMS (2004) Sir Charles Scott Sherrington (1857-1952) and the synapse J. Neurol. Neurosurg. Psychiatry 2004;75;544