ReviewExperimental physiology2026
Blue plaque review series: Thomas Graham Brown: Before his time.
Review in Experimental physiology, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- Blue plaque review series: Thomas Graham Brown: Before his time.Experimental physiology · 2026Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Thomas Graham Brown made a seminal discovery, published in 1911 while he was a Carnegie Fellow in the University of Liverpool laboratory of Nobel Prize winner Charles S. Sherrington. Working in cats, he showed that rhythmic 'voluntary' behaviour, such as stepping and, by inference, walking, does not result from a chain of reflex events, but that there are rhythmic circuits (oscillators) in the spinal cord that can produce a programme of alternating antagonistic muscular contractions and, by inference, motor neuron activities that underlie rhythmic stepping. This was the first definitive demonstration of what today we call a central pattern generator for an 'important' non-automatic rhythmic behaviour, and it should have rocked the foundations of the Sherringtonian view of the nervous system, but it didn't. Like the biblical 'Vox clamantis in deserto' (Isaiah 40:3, Biblia Scara Vulgata), Brown was largely ignored by his contemporaries, including Sherrington, only to be rediscovered starting in the 1960s. The legacy of Thomas Graham Brown is not only his scientific contribution that ultimately impelled the field of motor pattern generation forwards but also an object lesson in how powerful voices can drown out the dissenters. It remains as a lasting imprint on our science.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.