Definition
Charles Sherrington coined the term “proprioception” to describe the sensing of the body’s own movements (Sherrington 1907). He included receptors of the vestibular apparatus as well as receptors in deep tissues such as muscles in his definition. Proprioceptive signals are an important component of feedback to the CNS for the control of posture and movement. Input to the spinal cord from proprioceptors influences the activity of muscles via reflex connections to motoneurons. It is also conveyed to structures in the brainstem, midbrain, cerebrum, and cerebellum involved in motor control. Neuromechanical models incorporating proprioceptive feedback have become increasingly influential in the understanding of the neural control of movement.
Detailed Description
In 1834, Charles Bell proposed that mammalian muscles contain sensory receptors that mediated both a “muscle sense” underlying the subconscious control of movement (Bell 1834) and the conscious sensation of position and...
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Prochazka, A. (2014). Proprioceptor Models. In: Jaeger, D., Jung, R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Computational Neuroscience. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7320-6_644-1
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