Corollary discharge is the signalling or communication between boxes within the nervous system. In multicellular organisms, behavior is the result of the coordination between many cells. It is the communications between the boxes within the nervous system that provide for the coordination > of the cells. In the example of the crayfish, the five abdominal ganglia are responsible for the swimmeret movement. The stimuli of the abdominal ganglia was recorded and it was found that the each of the ganglia had the same pattern, but each of them were delayed a little after the ganglia before it. So when a cut was made between the first and second ganglia, the first ganglia did not have a pattern that coordinated with the other four. In this case, corollary discharge makes it so that when the first box, or in this case the abdominal ganglia gets a signal to stimulate the swimmeret, it not only signals the swimmeret, but signals the next box (abdominal ganglia #2) so that it can stimulate the swimmeret and signal the next box. Together, all the boxes communicating to the next, and stimulating the swimmeret, produce the behavior of swimming in the crayfish.

Corollary discharge allows for the pattern generations between boxes in neurons. Without communication between the many cells that are involved with one behavior, the simple behavior could not occur. If there is no coordination of the cells involved in a specific behavior, then the cells would randomly stimulate a part of the muscle and nothing would occur. This was the case for the first abdominal ganglia when it was stimulating the swimmeret without the coordination of the other four ganglia. If there existed a cut between each of the abdominal ganglia then each of them would stimulate the swimmeret regardless to how the ganglia before it was working, because there is no connection between the neurons and thus no corollary discharge which is essential for behavior to occur.

Good focus on a paradigmatic example. Can now imagine similar arrangements as basis for explaining other sorts of behaviors? PG