The tonic cerebellar system and the tonic motor system compose the tonic functional system: proprioception

The tonic cerebellar system and the tonic motor system compose the tonic functional system: proprioception

If the cerebellum performs a single basic function across all of its modules, the universal cerebellar transform, then it stands to reason that we should be able to find an indication of this in its motoric substrate. If we observe that the motoric system associated with cerebellar function is the postural or core system, then we find ready consilience in it cybernetic (or mechanical) anatomical and perceptual behavior (as proprioception).

This system, proprioception and its motoric expression in the tonic functional system, is a poorly understood sector of neurophysiology (for good reason). However a field of experts on this subject already exists in the somatic tradition of “natural philosophy” (archaic for science prior to its mathematization). This field of specialists includes bodyworkers, manual therapists, as well as meditation and movement arts practitioners and teachers, all of whom work with the system directly.

The tonic functional system has been well defined in this alternative, somatic sector of our modern knowledge politics. We have collectively a clear understanding of it at all biological levels, from molecular mechanotransduction, to the cellular level of muscle spindles, to the bodywide myofascial synergies of the motor architecture, its parallel reflection in the hindbrain, its psychological and neurological significance, and its synergistic (postural) kinesiology at the level of felt muscular and meditative experience.

Although we can describe it verbally, the system is haptic rather than verbal and so requires a preverbal form of cognition and attention. This makes sense because our experience of embodiment is a conscious product of this system at work within us. The system is self directed and self referential kinematicslly; its function is self evidencing. This sets it apart from all other forms of conventional conscious, objective forms of knowledge. The conscious motor system, called the dynamic or phasic system, composed of the extremities, is explicit whereas the tonic cerebellar system, composed of the unitary axial core, is implicit both cognitively and physically.

Knowledge of the tonic system, quite different from the dynamic or phasic (surface) system, lies somewhat beyond the bounds of what is permitted to analytical reason alone. This profound preverbal coordinative impulse is the universal cerebellar transform, which can be felt most clearly in the major bony landmarks of the axial anatomy, the tonic motor system.

While our knowledge of the highly regular structure of the cerebellum adds to our understanding of embodiment, our experience of embodiment in turn greatly enriches our grasp of cerebellar function. An integration of these two fields of knowledge, neurological and analytical together with somatic and embodied, are the foundation of a radical synthesis in our understanding of cognition.