Sherrington used reflexes in the spinal cord as a way of investigating the general properties of neurons and the nervous system. These experiments led him to postulate "Sherrington's Law," which states that for every neural activation of a muscle, there is a corresponding inhibition of the opposing muscle. Sherrington is also known for his study of the synapse, a word which he coined for the then-theoretical connecting point of neurons. One of Sherrington's students, John Carew Eccles later won the Nobel Prize in 1963 for his work on the synapse. Other neuroscience research done by Sherrington investigated proprioception and the neural control of posture.
In addition to the nervous system, Sherrington studied a number of pressing medical issues of his time. In 1885 he went to Spain to investigate an outbreak of cholera and met Santiago Ramon y Cajal there. He also learned techniques in bacteriology from Robert Koch while studying an outbreak of cholera in Berlin.
Sherrington also made an important distinction among exteroceptive sensory nerves that detect stimuli from outside the body (such as smells, sounds, and light), interoceptive nerves that detect stimuli taken in to the body (foods), and proprioceptive nerves that detect states within the body such as the position of a muscle.
Sherrington was also the first to use the term neuron for the nerve cell and synapse for the junction between nerve cells.
Charles Scott Sherrington became one of the founders of the discipline of neurophysiology through his research on how nerve impulses are transmitted between the central nervous system and muscles.
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