Muscles or Movements? Representation in the Nascent Brain Sciences

Abstract

The idea that the brain is a representational organ has roots in the nineteenth century, when neurologists began drawing conclusions about what the brain represents from clinical and experimental studies. One of the earliest controversies surrounding representation in the brain was the "muscles versus movements" debate, which concerned whether the motor cortex represents complex movements or rather fractional components of movement. Prominent thinkers weighed in on each side: neurologists John Hughlings Jackson and F.M.R. Walshe in favor of complex movements, neurophysiologist Charles Sherrington and neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield in favor of movement components. This essay examines these and other brain scientists' evolving notions of representation during the first eighty years of the muscles versus movements debate (c. 1873-1954). Although participants agreed about many of the superficial features of representation, their inferences reveal deep-seated disagreements about its inferential role. Divergent epistemological commitments stoked conflicting conceptions of what representational attributions imply and what evidence supports them.

Contextualizing, eliminating, or glossing: What to do with unclear scientific concepts like representation

“…To do so, in contrast to historians and philosophers of science who have used historical tools, we have used experimental methods (but we do plan to bring an historical perspective in the future; cf. Ward, 2023). Equipped with this detailed description, our next goal is to understand why the concept is so used.…”

Contextualizing, eliminating, or glossing: What to do with unclear scientific concepts like representation

“…To do so, in contrast to historians and philosophers of science who have used historical tools, we have used experimental methods (but we do plan to bring an historical perspective in the future; cf. Ward, 2023). Equipped with this detailed description, our next goal is to understand why the concept is so used.…”

Muscle PTSD, Predictive Processing, and Reinforcement Learning: Reimagining and Treating Non-Specific Musculoskeletal Disorders as Mind/Body Conditions

“…While the term "muscle weakness" is well used, researchers often state that the brain "thinks" in terms of movements, not individual muscles [260]. Stimulation of specific motor cortex zones has been shown to trigger complex, naturalistic movements involving multiple muscles and joints [261].…”

Where did real representations go? Commentary on: The concept of representation in the brain sciences: The current status and ways forward by Favela and Machery

“…The results of the survey can be summarized as follows: The use of the word representation in empirical work, rather than referring to important idea in cognitive science, has instead been demoted to being either a vague filler term or just refers to a correlation between neural responses and either external stimuli or states of the body. As Zina Ward has pointed out recently in the context of representation in the brain sciences, channeling Sally Haslanger, “how someone explicitly characterizes a concept may not line up with how they actually use it” (Ward, 2023, p. 15). This survey seems to have fallen between two chairs in this regard—revealing a good thing and a bad thing.…”

Contextualizing, eliminating, or glossing: What to do with unclear scientific concepts like representation

“…To do so, in contrast to historians and philosophers of science who have used historical tools, we have used experimental methods (but we do plan to bring an historical perspective in the future; cf. Ward, 2023). Equipped with this detailed description, our next goal is to understand why the concept is so used.…”

Muscle PTSD, Predictive Processing, and Reinforcement Learning: Reimagining and Treating Non-Specific Musculoskeletal Disorders as Mind/Body Conditions

“…While the term "muscle weakness" is well used, researchers often state that the brain "thinks" in terms of movements, not individual muscles [260]. Stimulation of specific motor cortex zones has been shown to trigger complex, naturalistic movements involving multiple muscles and joints [261].…”

Where did real representations go? Commentary on: The concept of representation in the brain sciences: The current status and ways forward by Favela and Machery

“…The results of the survey can be summarized as follows: The use of the word representation in empirical work, rather than referring to important idea in cognitive science, has instead been demoted to being either a vague filler term or just refers to a correlation between neural responses and either external stimuli or states of the body. As Zina Ward has pointed out recently in the context of representation in the brain sciences, channeling Sally Haslanger, “how someone explicitly characterizes a concept may not line up with how they actually use it” (Ward, 2023, p. 15). This survey seems to have fallen between two chairs in this regard—revealing a good thing and a bad thing.…”

Contextualizing, eliminating, or glossing: What to do with unclear scientific concepts like representation

“…To do so, in contrast to historians and philosophers of science who have used historical tools, we have used experimental methods (but we do plan to bring an historical perspective in the future; cf. Ward, 2023). Equipped with this detailed description, our next goal is to understand why the concept is so used.…”

Muscle PTSD, Predictive Processing, and Reinforcement Learning: Reimagining and Treating Non-Specific Musculoskeletal Disorders as Mind/Body Conditions

“…While the term "muscle weakness" is well used, researchers often state that the brain "thinks" in terms of movements, not individual muscles [260]. Stimulation of specific motor cortex zones has been shown to trigger complex, naturalistic movements involving multiple muscles and joints [261].…”

Where did real representations go? Commentary on: The concept of representation in the brain sciences: The current status and ways forward by Favela and Machery

“…The results of the survey can be summarized as follows: The use of the word representation in empirical work, rather than referring to important idea in cognitive science, has instead been demoted to being either a vague filler term or just refers to a correlation between neural responses and either external stimuli or states of the body. As Zina Ward has pointed out recently in the context of representation in the brain sciences, channeling Sally Haslanger, “how someone explicitly characterizes a concept may not line up with how they actually use it” (Ward, 2023, p. 15). This survey seems to have fallen between two chairs in this regard—revealing a good thing and a bad thing.…”