Removing a single neuron in a vertebrate brain forever abolishes an essential behavior.

ABSTRACT: The giant Mauthner (M) cell is the largest neuron known in the vertebrate brain. It has enabled major breakthroughs in neuroscience but its ultimate function remains surprisingly unclear: An actual survival value of M cell-mediated escapes has never been supported experimentally and ablating the cell repeatedly failed to eliminate all rapid escapes, suggesting that escapes can equally well be driven by smaller neurons. Here we applied techniques to simultaneously measure escape performance and the state of the giant M axon over an extended period following ablation of its soma. We discovered that the axon survives remarkably long and remains still fully capable of driving rapid escape behavior. By unilaterally removing one of the two M axons and comparing escapes in the same individual tha

SUBMITTER: Hecker A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7022180 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature