Back in the 1950s as a high school student, I was frightened by the though of Pavlovian conditioning used by the Soviets on US and French soldiers in Korea and Indochina in the manner depicted in the film "Manchurian Candidate." In the US I was exposed to Skinnerian Conditioning (not that he alone generated it). But the fear of vulnerability provoked by the former and the hope of better learning promised by the latter drove me to the study of behavior. As a term project, I remember, I had hungry cats walking through a tub full of water to reach food, measuring the latency to entering the water and walking across it to get the food. I concluded that it is not the "wetness" of water that makes it so unpleasant to cars but rather its temperature, given their willingness to go for the food and the decline in latency when the water was about 80 F degrees. I got a decent grade for the experiment but also the warning on the paper: "DON'T TRY TO SWIM BEFORE YOU CAN WALK!" This never left my mind, but as I watch the many Skinner-Chomsky debates on Utube, I marvel at how BEHAVIORISM is in no way a settled science, as both seemed to be trying swim. Yet no one could deny the predictability of behavior, especially when statistically manipulated. While for Skinner the CNS was assiduously designated "terra incognita," for Sherrington the REFLEX ARC was the essence of neurophysiology. But, from today's perspective, we might well say that Sir Charles also did a lot "TRYING TO WALK BEFORE HE COULD SWIM." The integration of ever ascending complex reflexes has, in to the 1980s, driven many of us to look at M1, M2, M3 and M4 as ascending reflex loops that are distinguishable on the EMG but that integrate complexity at ever higher orders. Drs Knapp, Taub and Berman had broken the lowest of these-- the myotatic reflex-- by rhizotomy from C2 to T12 (preganglionic section of the dorsal roots: deaff) to show tremendous residual capacity in the performance of arm flexion in monkeys in order to avoid or escape electric shock. But because of exposure to Denny-Brown, Gilman, Pribram and others, I became as interested in the motor capacity of the deaff limb in a less restrictive environment. When my mentor, Dr Taub, went off his own way, Berman, Tran and I continued to look at the behavioral capacities of monkeys whose segmental arcs were interrupted as opposed to cutting them higher up through other lesions. For example, 10 months after section of the dorsal columns or exterpation of the dorsal columns nuclei, monkeys exhibited no difficulty whatever the proximal limb "reaching" for a target while the distally Napier's precision grip disappeared, replaced by a cruder all-finger scooping grip more akin to Napier's power grip. If we superimposed deaff, the reaching movement became extremely dymetric but the precision grip returned. Furthermore, deaff done on previously cerebellectomized monkeys exhibited far less of the dysmetria than the deaff only monkeys. Pre-deaff motor cortical lesion: #4 or # & #6 extirpations seemed to do little to reach and grasp. Brilliant work by Gianutsos showed that blind monkeys who had learned a task well, regained it after deaff. We showed that visually guided reaching was dysmetric while visually triggered movements were not. Most peculiar was loss of grasp if one or more rootlets were left intact as opposed to none. All in all, one might say, that movements seem to be impeded by incomplete residual sensory input, performed far more poorly than when there is none, as if the "noise" were disruptive. Both Taub's lab and ours showed amazing forelimb motor capacity on the part of monkeys deaff in he second trimester and delivered vaginally up to one year post-natum. But I must say, that noting was as rewarding as, per Denny-Brown's admonition, watching the monkeys in a giant gang cage together with intact monkeys performing daily movements. Unfortunately, assault of Taub's lab by PETA made such studies pretty much disappear. Though the main horror show focused on by PETA had to do with the paraplegia of some of his monkeys and their biting of their deaff hands, we learned how to intraoperatively prevent the occurrence of paraplegia and postoperatively the hand biting. One of our last monkeys was most generously housed in Dr Kandel's fascilities and died ten years postop with hands intact and legs fully operational. But I have seen noting other than fascinating studies on some ten humans deafferented by a viral disease. The emphasis in analysis, however, was more in terms of top-down notions rather than bottom up.

From the clinical side, after a long hiatus, I became very interested in the unrelenting evolution and persistence of Parkinsonism and other of what we used to call "extra-pyramidal" disorders. In the quarter century or so since our research stopped and Taub's went into other human clinical issues-- a most unfortunate consequence of PETA's misrepresentation of the state of Taub's research, with no one having the courage to defend its value, little, if anything, has been done with deaff except in insects since-- despite the amazing sustenance of Merzenich's & Taub's theories of neuro-plasticity proven histologically when his monkeys were sacrificed and studied by NIH.

Since those heady days Taub's theory of LEARNED HELPLESSNESS to account for disuse of the affected limb by a unilat deaff, has proven critical to rehab medicine, the medical community, at least, giving him his due recognition. And, current notions of the brain motor function have gone far beyond the M1,2,3,4 reflexes notions of the last century. There is more of a tendency to look at telencephalic generation of behavior, though the brilliant work of Bizzi et al on spinal motor synergies have greatly elaborated motor complexity in the spinal cord. The tendency has been "top down," the cerebral cortex considered the origin of "purposeful movements." Yet, so-called "extrapyramidal" disorders as they evolve have been rather baffling. Desmurget, Sirigu and colleagues have invoked INTENT of FRONTO-PARIETAL origin in behavioral intent. But, Yin has done very much to focus attention on the basal ganglia, reviving the works of Cools to link critical elements of willful behavior. And, Garcia-Rill has almost magically focused attention of the brain stem circuits. All in all, INTENTIONALITY has been raised to the level of CONSCIOUSNESS and ATTENTION, eradicating distinctions between cognitive and motor regions of the brain. Similarly, the LIMBIC notions of MacLean's TRIUNE BRAIN have also been left behind as we now think of the entire brain as an integrated system. No one could be more fortunate than someone having a chance to study with Sir John Eccles and his notion of the brain as a burning furnace whose energy is CARVED by inhibitory circuits seems, so to speak, right on. But, neuroscience today seems most cerebrally oriented. Little wonder, given how richly marvelous becomes behavior and cognition as the cortex expands. Yet, the peadagogic brilliance of Prof Grillner and his collegues draws our attention to the lack of distinction between the most primitive and the most complex evo-devo studies. One wonders, therefore, if there does develop an intent as a problem for which memory concocts solutions. And, if so, where resides this "intent" in the brain? I would insult no one if I invoke the amazing work of the Japanese groups amongst the many who have sorted out for us the distinction between medial and posterior striatal regions when in tomes to adaptive learning and habit respectively. Dr. Graybiel's churning out of fascinating BG-scientists that under her tutelage have demonstrated an activity distinction between BG activity while learning is going on as opposed to when it is flawlessly performed (amongst other amazing aspects of striosomes and matriosomes). All this, as Prof. Haber suggests, leaves an awful lot of complex circuits in the sub-pallial region to influence the pallidum. And, as Reiner point's out in accord with Grillner, the basal ganglia has not changed much in vertebrates, occupying far greater territory of the telencephalon for far longer in evolution of the brain. Yet, as one author so ably argues in SCIENCE, even in invertebrates, the mushroom body is a homologue of the basal ganglia. The cerebral cortex is a messy mess until us mammals. Yet, if lamprey eels, not to speak of bees, make choices-- what Skinner called "purposeful behaviors,"-- can it be that INTENT is cooked up in the BASAL GANGLIA, the cerebral cortex only elaborating on it through MEMORY, the essence of being. I see reason for hope in the literature that strong functional links between the BG and Hippocampus are discovered to be so abundant as to muddle the distiction between different types of memories. Indeed, circuit specific functions are becoming increasingly muddled. But, assuming that intent restricts and directs memory, planning and other aspects and given what deficits we see in "EXTRAPYRAMIDAL DISORDERS," what do the illustrious researchers participating in RESEARCHGATE think of the basal gasnglia as the initiating point of intent?