Proprioception - History of Study

History of Study

The position-movement sensation was originally described in 1557 by Julius Caesar Scaliger as a "sense of locomotion". Much later, in 1826, Charles Bell expounded the idea of a "muscle sense" and this is credited with being one of the first described physiologic feedback mechanisms. Bell's idea was that commands are carried from the brain to the muscles, and that reports on the muscle's condition would be sent in the reverse direction. Later, in 1880, Henry Charlton Bastian suggested "kinaesthesia" instead of "muscle sense" on the basis that some of the afferent information (back to the brain) was coming from other structures including tendons, joints, and skin. In 1889, Alfred Goldscheider suggested a classification of kinaesthesia into three types: muscle, tendon, and articular sensitivity.

In 1906, Charles Scott Sherrington published a landmark work that introduced the terms "proprioception", "interoception", and "exteroception". The "exteroceptors" are the organs responsible for information from outside the body such as the eyes, ears, mouth, and skin. The interoceptors then give information about the internal organs, while "proprioception" is awareness of movement derived from muscular, tendon, and articular sources. Such a system of classification has kept physiologists and anatomists searching for specialised nerve endings that transmit data on joint capsule and muscle tension (such as muscle spindles and Pacini corpuscles).