An Optogenetic Demonstration of Motor Modularity in the Mammalian Spinal Cord.

ABSTRACT: Motor modules are neural entities hypothesized to be building blocks of movement construction. How motor modules are underpinned by neural circuits has remained obscured. As a first step towards dissecting these circuits, we optogenetically evoked motor outputs from the lumbosacral spinal cord of two strains of transgenic mice - the Chat, with channelrhodopsin (ChR2) expressed in motoneurons, and the Thy1, expressed in putatively excitatory neurons. Motor output was represented as a spatial field of isometric ankle force. We found that Thy1 force fields were more complex and diverse in structure than Chat fields: the Thy1 fields comprised mostly non-parallel vectors while the Chat fields, mostly parallel vectors. In both, most fields elicited by co-stimulation of two laser beams were well

SUBMITTER: Caggiano V 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5062376 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature