After reading the manuscript, some biologists inquired why, on the basis
of the broad experimental material presented in this book, we had not
come up with a model describing the operation of the cerebellum. To
answer this question, we decided to write a preface to our book. How the
nervous system copes with the complexity of the world is one of the
central problems of neurophys- iology. The question was clearly
formulated for the frrst time by N. A. Bernstein. Considering the
problem of motor control, he pointed out that the main objective of
motor coordination is to overcome the redundant number of degrees of
freedom of the motor apparatus or, in other words, to diminish the
number of independent variables which control the movement (Bernstein
1967). These I. M. Gelfand and M. L. Zetlin ideas were further developed
by (Gelfand and Zetlin 1966). They proposed, in particular, the
"non-individualized" ("non-addressed") mode of control in complex
systems, where only the highest levels of the system have the full
notion about the fmal task while the main "effectors" act on the basis
of very limited information. These propositions were made by Gelfand and
Zetlin in a very general form, but, nevertheless, proved to be fruitful
in determining the direction of experimental research. For instance, the
discovery of the "locomotory region" of the brain stem (Shik et al.