Efference Copy and Corollary Discharge: Implications for Thinking and Its Disorders*

Abstract

Many motor commands in the nervous system are associated with corollary discharges which alter the excitability in both sensory and motor systems. These discharges may assist in the distinction between self-generated and externally produced movements; they also allow (or represent) monitoring of the motor commands before the effector response has occurred. Here, I hypothesize that this mechanism of control and integration is also present in thinking, which as Hughlings Jackson pointed out, may be considered the highest and most complex form of motor activity. I speculate that if corollary discharges are normally part of the motor mechanisms of thought, their derangement could produce many of the symptoms of schizophrenia.