Nikolai Aleksandrovich Bernstein (russian: Никола́й Алекса́ндрович Бернште́йн; 5 November 1896 – 16 January 1966) was a

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

neurophysiologist who has pioneered motion-tracking devices and formal processing of information obtained from the use of these devices. He was also one of first psychologists to suggest that behaviour is generative, constructive and not reactive. He was born and died in

Moscow Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...

Life

Nikolai Bernstein graduate high school in 1913. He was interested in languages and philosophy and wanted to be a linguist so he enrolled at Moscow University to study

History History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the History of writing#Inventions of writing, invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbr ...

and

Philology Philology () is the study of language in oral and writing, written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defin ...

. However, as

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

broke out in the summer of 1914, the Bernstein family felt the need to help their country during these hard times. Nikolai then took an alternative route in his education and started attending the medical college where he graduated in 1919 with a medical degree. Nikolai was then drafted into the

Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and, after ...

as a doctor. After his service ended in 1921 his father helped him get a job as a physician at th
Gilyarovsky Psychiatric Clinic
till his father's death, he then took over his father's practice who was also a physician. Cyclogram Gastev TSIT

His first scientific work was in 1922, when he, along with other researchers, were invited to study movement during manual labour in

Central Institute of Labour The Central Institute of Labour (CIT) (russian: Центральный институт труда) was an organisation set up in Moscow for the study of work. It was founded by Aleksei Gastev in 1920. Nikolai Bernstein was involved in scientific ...

. The purpose of the study was to optimize productivity, and Bernstein's analysis focused on cutting metal with a chisel. He used cyclographic techniques to track human movement, a technique he would continue using for many of his experiments. His research showed that most movements, like hitting a chisel with a hammer, are composed of smaller movements. Any one of these smaller movements, if altered, affect the movement as a whole. In 1926, Bernstein started a series of experiments that examined human walking. Originally, this work was to help with the engineering of pedestrian bridges. He studied the development of walking as humans matured and aged, and he also examined the gaits of those with brain damage. In 1935, he received a

Doctor of Science Doctor of Science ( la, links=no, Scientiae Doctor), usually abbreviated Sc.D., D.Sc., S.D., or D.S., is an academic research degree awarded in a number of countries throughout the world. In some countries, "Doctor of Science" is the degree used f ...

degree without submitting a thesis. He was also one of the first members of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences, founded in 1944. In 1948, he was awarded the

Stalin Prize Stalin Prize may refer to: * The State Stalin Prize in science and engineering and in arts, awarded 1941 to 1954, later known as the USSR State Prize * The Stalin Peace Prize, awarded 1949 to 1955, later known as the Lenin Peace Prize The Int ...

for science. Since he did his research behind the

iron curtain The Iron Curtain was the political boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1991. The term symbolizes the efforts by the Soviet Union (USSR) to block itself and its s ...

of the

USSR The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...

, his ideas only became known to Western scientists in the 1960s, when his seminal book, ''The Co-ordination and Regulation of Movements,'' was translated into English from Russian.

Work

Bernstein was one of the pioneers in the field of

motor control Motor control is the regulation of movement in organisms that possess a nervous system. Motor control includes reflexes as well as directed movement. To control movement, the nervous system must integrate multimodal sensory information (both f ...

and

motor learning Motor learning refers broadly to changes in an organism's movements that reflect changes in the structure and function of the nervous system. Motor learning occurs over varying timescales and degrees of complexity: humans learn to walk or talk over ...

inventing original devices that track the motion of people with and without experience in actions. The field of motor control basically studies how the Central Nervous System (CNS) controls posture and movement. Understanding how humans plan and control movement is a major challenge because of the large number of joints that provide the human musculoskeletal system with numerous kinematic degrees of freedom. Because the goal of most movement tasks, like moving a hand to a target, is defined in terms of a much smaller number of kinematic degrees of freedom, it can be achieved in an infinite number of different ways (also referred to as the 'inverse kinematics problem'). Furthermore, the number of muscles acting across a joint generally exceeds the number of kinematic degrees of freedom of that joint. As a result, a given movement can be realized with an infinite number of muscle activation patterns (also referred to as the 'inverse dynamics problem'). Even though a goal can be reached in an infinite number of ways, many studies have revealed very consistent and stereotypical patterns of kinematics and muscle activation. Evidently, the Central Nervous System (CNS) is capable of adequately controlling the many degrees of freedom. This question of how the CNS is capable of adequately controlling the many degrees of freedom of the musculoskeletal system was first addressed by Bernstein and is now known as the '

Bernstein problem In differential geometry, Bernstein's problem is as follows: if the graph of a function on R''n''−1 is a minimal surface in R''n'', does this imply that the function is linear? This is true in dimensions ''n'' at most 8, but false in dimens ...

' (though distinct from

Bernstein's problem In differential geometry, Bernstein's problem is as follows: if the graph of a function on R''n''−1 is a minimal surface in R''n'', does this imply that the function is linear? This is true in dimensions ''n'' at most 8, but false in dimens ...

in mathematics). Bernstein suggested that the CNS is capable of "functionally freezing degrees of freedom." As an analogy, controlling the four wheels of a car independently is very difficult. Yet, by functionally freezing degrees of freedom (the two rear wheels are only allowed to rotate around one shared horizontal axis, and the two front wheels are also allowed to rotate in parallel around a longitudinal axis, controlled by the steering wheel) a car becomes much easier to control. Bernstein also did major work with motor learning, creating models for stages of learning. His work in the 1950s and 1960s was remarkably insightful and is still valid and respected today. Bernstein is also famous for saying that "none of the actions is repeated but every action is constructed anew; it's just a matter what level regulates this construction". He proposed a theory of "levels of control over action construction" that later were echoed in levels of control in cognitive psychology. He was likely very much influenced by the work of

John Hughlings Jackson John Hughlings Jackson, FRS (4 April 1835 – 7 October 1911) was an English neurologist. He is best known for his research on epilepsy. Biography He was born at Providence Green, Green Hammerton, near Harrogate, Yorkshire, the youngest so ...

, who posited a hierarchical organization of the nervous system. Bernstein work opened a new discipline called

kinesiology Kinesiology () is the scientific study of human body movement. Kinesiology addresses physiological, anatomical, biomechanical, pathological, neuropsychological principles and mechanisms of movement. Applications of kinesiology to human health ...

that study the structure and mechanisms of motion. American kinesiologist Karl Newell is one of many to be greatly influenced by Bernstein. Newell (1986) arranged constraints into three main groups: Individual (structural or functional), task, and environmental constraints. Bernstein also coined the term

biomechanics Biomechanics is the study of the structure, function and motion of the mechanical aspects of biological systems, at any level from whole organisms to organs, cells and cell organelles, using the methods of mechanics. Biomechanics is a branch of ...

, the study of movement through the application of mechanical principles.

Publications

In Russian

*''Obshchaya Biomekhanika'', "General Biomechanics" (1926) *''Biomekhanika dlya Instruktorov,'' "Biomechanics for Instructors" (Moscow, 1926) *''O Poestroenii Dvizhenni'', "On the Construction of Movements" (1947) *''Ocherki po Fiziologii Dvizheniy i Fiziologii Aktivnosti'', "Essays on Physiology of Movements and Activity Physiology" (1966) *''O Lovkosti i ee Razvitii'', "On Dexterity and its Development" (1991) *''Sovremennye Iskaniia v Fiziologii Nervnogo Protsessa'', "Contemporary Inquiries into the Physiology of the Nervous Process" (Moscow, 2003)

English translations

*''The Co-ordination and Regulation of Movements,'' Pergamon Press (Oxford, 1967) *''Dexterity and Its Development'', Lawrence Erlbaum Associates (1996), republished by Psychology Press (2009), Routledge (Oxford and New York, 2016) *''Biomechanics for Instructors'', Springer (Switzerland, 2020) *''Bernstein's Construction of Movements: Original Text and Commentaries'', Routledge (New York and Abingdon, 2020)

German translations

*''Bewegungsphysiologie'', "Movement Physiology" (Leipzig, 1982) *''Die Entwicklung der Bewegungsfertigkeiten'', "The Development of Movement Skills", Chapter 8 of ''O Poestroenii Dvizhenni'' (Leipzig, 1996)

References

External links

*
Genealogie der Familien Eger und Bernstein
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bernstein, Nikolai Russian physiologists Corresponding Members of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences Stalin Prize winners 1896 births 1966 deaths Soviet physiologists 20th-century Russian scientists Moscow State University alumni