In 1932 Sir Charles Sherrington received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for showing that the nervous system is made up of a combination of excitatory and inhibitory nerve cells. It is the balance of these two neural systems that allows us to move our limbs in a smooth, coordinated, accurate way. Without inhibition, our movements would be wildly spastic and uncoordinated. While Sherrington’s work was primarily on the sensory/motor system (at the level of the spinal cord), the balancing of excitatory systems by inhibitory ones occurs throughout the nervous system and is considered a
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