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Comment
. 2018 Apr 25:12:34.
doi: 10.3389/fncir.2018.00034. eCollection 2018.

Commentary: Elimination of Left-Right Reciprocal Coupling in the Adult Lamprey Spinal Cord Abolishes the Generation of Locomotor Activity

Lorenzo Cangiano  1 , Sten Grillner  2
Affiliations
Comment

Commentary: Elimination of Left-Right Reciprocal Coupling in the Adult Lamprey Spinal Cord Abolishes the Generation of Locomotor Activity

Lorenzo Cangiano et al. Front Neural Circuits. .
No abstract available

Keywords: central pattern generators; coordination; coupling; lamprey; locomotion; oscillators; rhythmicity; spinal cord.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
The hemi-spinal cord of the lamprey is capable of expressing locomotor-related rhythmic bursting. (A) When activated pharmacologically (0.75 mM D-glutamate in this panel) intact ex vivo spinal cord preparations express the left-right alternating rhythmic pattern of fictive swimming (0%). Reducing crossed connections by 55% with intermittent midsagittal sections increases burst frequency while maintaining alternation. Complete separation of the two hemicords (100%) leads to relatively fast autonomous bursting on each side. A plot of burst frequency vs. extent of separation shows that fictive swimming in the intact cord and rhythmic bursting in the hemicord are functionally linked, with the latter representing the operation of the locomotor network in the absence of crossed connections. (B) The hemicord is able to express longlasting bouts of rhythmic bursting simply in response to brief electrical stimulation (i.e., without glutamatergic agonists) (upper traces). Burst frequencies vary in a wide range that partially overlaps with that of swimming (silhouettes in the graph). Higher frequencies correlate with stronger levels of network activity (thickness of the silhouettes). Weak threshold electrical stimulation evokes self-reinforcing activity (dashed white silhouette), demonstrating the intrinsic excitability of the hemicord when deprived of contralateral inhibition. Adapted with permission from Cangiano and Grillner (2003, 2005). (C) Dorsal-view of the Beaver mini-blade 376500 used by Messina et al. (2017) to hemisect the spinal cord (above), next to an ophthalmic knife of the type used in our experiments (below). A thicker blade is likely to cause more lateral compression in the tissue being cut.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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References

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