Charles Scott Sherrington (1857–1952) was a British neurophysiologist who established foundational principles of how the nervous system integrates sensory and motor function. Sherrington coined the term proprioception in 1906 to name the sensory system by which an organism perceives its own body position, movement, and effort — combining the Latin proprius (one’s own) with -ception (perception). He received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1932 (shared with Edgar Adrian) for work on the functions of neurons.
Sherrington’s The Integrative Action of the Nervous System (1906) described how sensory input, motor output, and reflex arcs combine into coordinated behavior. His work established the concept of the reflex arc as the basic unit of nervous system function — a model that, while subsequently refined, shaped 20th Century neuroscience. His classification of sensory receptors into exteroceptors (sensing the external environment), interoceptors (sensing the internal environment), and proprioceptors (sensing the body’s own state) remains foundational to somatic theory.
Notable works
- The Integrative Action of the Nervous System (1906)
- Man on His Nature (1940)
Related
- proprioception — the term Sherrington coined
- interoception — the complementary sense of internal state, also classified by Sherrington