Reflex doctrine

Most of the very successful work in cellular neurobiology was conducted under the protective umbrella of Sherrington s reflex doctrine, which provided sufficient information to help work out how neuronal circuits were organized. The reflex circuit model could explain the following the spinal reflexes involved in posture and movement the encoding of stimuli in sequences of action potentials in neurons, which could lead to sensation and even the coordination of the sensory and motor systems needed to account for movement (motor) behaviour. 

The reflex doctrine could not, however, help the pioneer sleep and dream scientists very much, because no link could be established between the activity of circuits of neurons (neuronal circuits) and the EEG. It had long been assumed that the EEG was the register of voltage changes in the brain (i.e. cerebral action potentials), although this could not explain the patterns of the EEG seen in sleep (e.g. spindles and slow waves), unless neuronal activity was continuous, i.e. spontaneous, as well as reflexive. Consequently, work at the cellular and EEG levels proceeded along entirely separate but parallel tracks, similar to those that Descartes thought God had used to set mind and body in perfect but independent motion. Cartesian duality dies slowly it is still alive and well in most of us because we cannot yet see how a physical object, the brain, can have subjective experience. This is the so-called hard problem of philosophy. 

---