The concept of the motor symphony has the most effect on me in terms of my thoughts about behavior. I came into this class thinking of the general black box model where you put in a stimuli, something occurs which we can't see: some processing of the stimuli, and then a response comes out the other side. However, the idea of the motor symphony which is able to occur without inputs from the outside break up the whole input portion of the black box theory. In class an example was given where you picked up a cup, and it was suggested that it was a visual process: observation of and compensation for previous movements. But than it was demonstrated that you could pick up the cup without looking at it. How does this action occur? The immensely intricate motor symphony must have some kind of guide by which it finds the cup, and that guide is memory. When you put that cup down on the table in front of you, a part of your brain noted the placement and several other notable aspects of the cup's situation. These noted aspects were stored in a reachable place where they could be accessed at the point when your body began to feel thirsty. When this occured, it was easy to draw up that memory and use it to guide the motor symphony. One bit that I was unsure about, is the actual definition of the motor symphony. Obviously I have come up with my own meaning for it, and the idea seems to fit well, but perhaps there is more to it than what I am suggesting. I guess I think of the motor symphony as a large grouping of many minutely small mechanisms that make up our general motor outputs. i.e. the many muscles that must contract just to bend my arm at the elbow. Please clarify my definition if I am not exactly getting it.

Very close, I think. Is (since you wrote this) now clear from class that the motor symphony is indeed all the small movements (actually the motoneuron discharges)? And yes, it does help to get rid of the black box, stimulus/response model. PG