Nikolai Bernstein

Nikolai Aleksandrovich Bernstein (1896 - 1966) was a Russian neurophysiologist.

Life
Bernstein was largely self-taught, though he was respected for his work by his colleagues.

His first work was in 1922, when he, along with other researchers, were invited to study movement during manual labor in Moscow's Central Institute of Labor. The purpose of the study was to optimize productivity and Bernstein's analysis focused on cutting metal with a chisel. Here he used cyclographic techniques to track human movement, a technique he would continue using for the rest of his experiments. His research here showed that most movements, like hitting a chisel with a hammer, were composed of smaller movements. Any one of these smaller movements, if altered, affected the entire movement as a whole.

In 1926, Bernstein started experiments with human walking, which were initially conducted to benefit the engineering of pedestrian bridges. He studied the development of walking as humans matured and aged along with those who had brain damage.

In 1935, he received a Doctorate of Sciences without submitting a thesis. He was also one of the first members of the Academy of Medical Sciences of USSR, founded in 1946. And, in 1948, he was awarded the Stalin prize for science.

Since he did his research behind the iron curtain of the USSR, his ideas have only really been known to western scientists since about the 1960s, when his book The co-ordination and regulation of movements was translated into English from Russian.

Work
He was one of the pioneers of research into biological motor control, proposing that human motion was controlled through adaptation to constraints placed upon it. That each movement was unique, and was adapted to the situation by a hierarchical set of control systems, each exerting input into the motion in sequence and in parallel.

He was likely very much influenced by the work of John Hughlings Jackson, who posited a hierarchical organization of the nervous system.

He also coined the term biomechanics, the study of movement through the application of mechanical principles.

Publications

 * The co-ordination and regulation of movements. Oxford: Pergamon Press. 1967
 * Bewegungsphysiologie, Leipzig 1982.
 * On co-ordination and its development, Moskow 1991.
 * Die Entwicklung der Bewegungsfertigkeiten, Leipzig 1996.