Föreläsningar och seminarier Seminarium i neurovetenskap: "Sensorimotor Control of Movement: Embodiment of the CPG"

Sammanfattning

The spinal circuits that control movement are organised around the locomotor CPG, a network of spinal interneurons and motor neurons that produces rhythmic locomotor activity in the absence of sensory feedback and descending motor commands. Importantly, the locomotor CPG is a flexible neural network that has the capacity to generate a wide range of motor behaviours.

Embodiment of locomotor CPG shapes these behaviours by ensuring the output of the locomotor CPG is tuned to the physical features of the body, the terrain in which it is moving, and action selection. This is achieved by the integrative interplay between state-dependent sensory feedback and descending supraspinal control. It is also dependent on ascending pathways that provide moment-to-moment updates to the brain on the state of the body and ongoing spinal motor activity.

This talk will discuss recent efforts by the Goulding lab to map the spinal sensorimotor circuitry and ascending spinal pathways that control movement, thereby providing an outline of the underlying functional logic of sensorimotor integration at the level of the spinal cord.