Talk:Sensory-motor coupling

Revising the intro sentence in lead
Right now, the first sentence says, "Sensory-motor coupling is the coupling or integration of the sensory system and motor system.” Say you don't know what the sensory system is, so you click on the WikiLink, well, the first sentence of the lead there also contains a circular definition: “The sensory nervous system is a part of the nervous system responsible for processing sensory information.” Would anyone mind if I change the intro sentence of this article to: "Sensory-motor coupling is the integration of the part of the nervous system that perceives sight, sound, touch, taste, smell and balance (sensory system) and the part that controls movement (motor system).”? PermStrump (talk) 17:29, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

I can imagine a few objections, but they're mostly aesthetic (the current phrasing is sort of "prettier"), and maybe other things that are inconsequential like aesthetics, and this change seems to make it more informative/clear for many readers, and not make it worse for anyone else. I don't think either definition is technically circular or has exactly the same problem as circular definitions, but it is a similar (potential) problem, and this suggestion seems to address it without real drawbacks. I wonder if the lack of a reply in over 3.9 years implies the (now somewhat alarmingly phrased) political concept "silence is consent." People must have seen this, no one has felt the need to object, and there is some empirical value in the suggestion (not that it empirically outweighs any drawbacks, but that's why I was thinking about replies, wanting consensus from a second "established" user, and not just making the edit, which would be quicker than all this waffling), and I think no meaningful drawbacks ("I think" both as a statement of a personal opinion and uncertainty). --50.53.199.43 (talk) 11:29, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

Examples: Patient R.W. could use additional detail, but would require additional source
This may seem frivolous, but I think it may be a nagging unanswered question for a portion of readers, and it seems relevant: When I read about R.W., my first thought was to wonder if he experienced a similar effect when turning his entire head, since many of those processes occur similarly (but probably far from identically) then, too. This seems like an unimportant detail, but also as relevant as the anecdote about what happens when he moves his eyes. Well, if he did experience a similar effect when moving his entire head (later referred to as "if yes"), then adding the same anecdote, replacing references to his eyes with references to his head, instead of the existing section, would probably have been of equal value to adding it as it currently is. I don't mean my suggestion to add something like "or head" somewhere (if yes) or "This did not occur when tracking a moving object by turning his entire head" is as valuable as the existing section, but (I think) it's appropriate to add.

I tried to find this detail myself, but the nearly 11,500-word reference document seems not to contain the words "head" or "neck," so it may not have the answer. Similarly, it seems that the same issue causing vertigo may have occurred when moving his eyes and/or head without tracking an object, and even when his field of view moved due to walking and such, since those also involve perceived movement that the brain must predict (albeit differently, and it might be easier when not tracking an object, since the external object is "causing" the movement). Some of that might be good to briefly mention in the article section, if a source for that information can be found.

I aimed for a degree of somewhat stilted specificity/dis-ambiguity that seemed appropriate, but the sentence length and other differences didn't necessarily improve readability. I hope this whole thing isn't ridiculous.

--50.53.199.43 (talk) 09:43, 27 February 2020 (UTC)