The brain seems a thoroughfare for nerve-action passing its way to the motor animal. It has been remarked that Life's aim is an act not a thought. To-day the dictum must be modified to admit that, often, to refrain from an act is no less an act than to commit one, because inhibition is coequally with excitation a nervous activity.
Charles Scott SherringtonThe terminal path may, to distinguish it from internuncial common paths, be called the final common path. The motor nerve to a muscle is a collection of such final common paths.
Charles Scott SherringtonThat a strong stimulus to such an afferent nerve, exciting most or all of its fibres, should in regard to a given muscle develop inhibition and excitation concurrently is not surprising.
Charles Scott SherringtonThis integrative action in virtue of which the nervous system unifies from separate organs an animal possessing solidarity, an individual, is the problem before us.
Charles Scott SherringtonHe solved at a stroke the great question of the direction of nerve-currents in their travel through brain and spinal cord.
Charles Scott SherringtonThe brain is a mystery; it has been and still will be. How does the brain produce thoughts? That is the central question and we have still no answer to it.
Charles Scott SherringtonIf we denote excitation as an end-effect by the sign plus (+), and inhibition as end-effect by the sign minus (-), such a reflex as the scratch-reflex can be termed a reflex of double-sign, for it develops excitatory end-effect and then inhibitory end-effect even during the duration of the exciting stimulus.
Charles Scott Sherrington