Abstract
Between 1923 and 1927 Kurt Wachholder and his assistant and collaborator Hans Altenburger published an impressive series of 11 papers on electrophysiological and kinematic studies on voluntary human movements in Pfluger s Archive, the leading journal for physiological studies in Germany at the time. Unfortunately, these excellent studies have remained largely unnoticed, partly because they are written in German and therefore inaccessible to many people in the post–World War II research community in motor control. Wachholderʼs name is sometimes only vaguely acknowledged as a pioneer in electromyography, as he was the first to report the tri-phasic pattern in discrete single-joint movements (Wachholder & Altenburger, 1926b). This study and one other paper on rhythmic movements have been recently translated, and their close reading provided astonishing insights, not only in an historical sense but also with respect to present-day research (Sternad, 2001; Sternad & Corcos, 2001; Wachholder & Altenburger, 1926a). The two studies gave a first impression of Wachholderʼs rigorous methodology, stringent logic, and far-reaching conclusions about the nature of movement generation that are more than just historical precursors but indeed of contemporary interest. At the end of this series of papers in Pfluger s Archive is the present study, unnumbered, but with an eye-catching title about the change of rest length in muscles. The topic of a changeable and controllable rest length in muscles has been a focus of attention in motor control since Feldmanʼs seminal studies in the 1960s that gave rise to the equilibrium-point hypothesis (Feldman, 1966a, 1966b). To what degree is Wachholder and Altenburgerʼs contribution a precursor to these thoughts? A few remarks about Wachholderʼs perspective should provide a suitable backdrop to the present paper. After all, this paper is only one of the building blocks for Wachholder s comprehensive work on voluntary posture and movements, which culminated 1928 in a monograph (Wachholder, 1928). This book provides a well-rounded perspective on, effectively, motor control. An outstanding characteristic of the physiologist Wachholder is that he combined his meticulous physiological experiments with a more encompassing psychological perspective, leading to broader-scale theorizing about the generation of human voluntary posture and movements. How does the nervous system control Motor Control, 2002, 6, 299-318
Published Version
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