Reflections on Jacques Paillard (1920–2006) — A pioneer in the field of motor cognition

This article reviews the scientific contributions of Jacques Paillard (1920–2006), who strengthened substantially the role of physiological psychology in the field of movement neuroscience. His research began in 1947 under the direction of the French neurophysiologist, Alfred Fessard (1900–1982), with whom he then collaborated for 9 years while an undergraduate and then graduate student and junior faculty member in psychology at the University of Paris (the Sorbonne). Paillard moved to the University of Marseille in 1957 as a Professor of Psychophysiology. In parallel, he became a founding member and administrator of the Institute of Neurophysiology and Psychophysiology, which began in 1963 on the Marseille campus of the National Center of Scientific Research (CNRS). Paillard retired from his university and CNRS positions in 1991 but he continued seminal research until his demise. Paillard advanced understanding of higher brain influences on human spinal motor mechanisms and the functional role of proprioception as revealed in patients deprived of such sensibility. He remains best known, however, for his work on human motor cognition. He reasoned that brain “maps” of the external world are constructed by the body's own movements and the central effects of their resulting central and peripheral feedback. He proposed two levels of interactive brain processing for the planning and/or execution of a reaching movement: 1) a sensorimotor level, using body posture as a key reference; and 2) a “higher” cognitive level for accurate movement performance, using learned representations of the position and shape of the environmental components, including the body, itself.