Antagonistic muscles and reciprocal innervation. Fourth note

The object of the present communication is to report to the Society further on the occurrence in so-called “voluntary” muscles of inhibition as well as of contraction, as result of excitation of the cortex cerebri. We have obtained by excitation of the cerebral cortex some remarkable instances of what one of us has described under the name of “reciprocal inervation,” that is, a species of co-ordinate innervation in which the relaxation of one set of a co-ordinated complexes of muscle-groups occurs as accompaniment of the active contraction of another set.