Brainstem neurons that command mammalian locomotor asymmetries

Cregg, Jared M.; Leiras, Roberto; Montalant, Alexia; Wanken, Paulina; Wickersham, Ian R.; Kiehn, Ole

doi:10.1038/s41593-020-0633-7

Cited by 109 publications

(195 citation statements)

References 71 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

164

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…In semi-intact preparations, where the brain is exposed and the body is free to move, low intensity MLR stimulation evokes walking, whereas higher intensities evoke swimming [13] (Figure 2E,F). Activation of reticulospinal neurons in one side of the brain induces ipsilateral body bending, as expected during steering movements ( Figure 2I,J [42]) based on observations in mice [38], zebrafish [28], and lamprey [43]. Hindbrain reticular neurons respond to MLR stimulation [44,45].…”

supporting

confidence: 56%

“…Experiments in zebrafish using genetic tools have uncovered a modular organisation of spinal cell populations controlling speed ( Figure 1B, for review, see [25,26]), the role of reticulospinal neurons in providing excitation to spinal swimming circuits [27] and in the control of steering movements [28], and a key role for mechanosensory feedback in the control of swimming [29][30][31] (Figure 1B). In mice, several cell types have recently been genetically defined, including MLR cells controlling locomotor speed and gait transitions [32][33][34], reticulospinal cell types relaying locomotor commands [35][36][37] or steering commands to the spinal cord [38], and spinal cell types involved in locomotor rhythmogenesis and coordination (for review, see [39]) ( Figure 1D). However, how these cell populations control locomotor speed and gait transitions in limbed vertebrates is not fully resolved.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Walking with Salamanders: From Molecules to Biorobotics

Ryczko

Simon

Ijspeert

2020

Trends in Neurosciences

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

How do four-legged animals adapt their locomotion to the environment? How do central and peripheral mechanisms interact within the spinal cord to produce adaptive locomotion and how is locomotion recovered when spinal circuits are perturbed? Salamanders are the only tetrapods that regenerate voluntary locomotion after full spinal transection. Given their evolutionary position, they provide a unique opportunity to bridge discoveries made in fish and mammalian models. Genetic dissection of salamander neural circuits is becoming feasible with new methods for precise manipulation, elimination, and visualisation of cells. These approaches can be combined with classical tools in neuroscience and with modelling and a robotic environment. We propose that salamanders provide a blueprint of the function, evolution, and regeneration of tetrapod locomotor circuits. Salamanders as a Model Organism for Studying Locomotion Two major challenges in neuroscience are to decipher how the interplay between central and peripheral mechanisms controls locomotion in four-legged animals (tetrapods) and to delineate the reorganisation of motor circuits after spinal lesion. In this review, we outline the reasons why salamanders are ideally suited to address these two problems. First, salamanders are the only tetrapods capable of regenerating their locomotor circuits after full transection at adult stage [1-3]. Second, they are the closest extant representatives of the first tetrapods that transitioned from aquatic to terrestrial life [4]. This key evolutionary position makes salamanders ideal to provide a bridge between discoveries in fish (such as zebrafish) and mammals (such as mouse). Salamanders swim underwater and walk on ground [4], allowing researchers to investigate to what extent body dynamics and sensory feedback shape these locomotor patterns. Third, high precision dissection of their neural circuits is becoming possible thanks to new tools that will allow visualisation and optogenetic and chemogenetic manipulations that can be combined with classical neuroscience tools and advanced modelling and robotic environments. It is thus timely to highlight the recent advances in salamander research at the intersection of genomics, systems neuroscience, modelling, and robotics, which altogether provide a unique opportunity to decode locomotor control in the intact and regenerated tetrapod nervous system. In this review, we systematically place these approaches and recent results into a cross-species comparative setting, with a special focus on zebrafish and mouse as comparative models for which most data on the genetic identity of locomotor circuits are available. For closer examination of the locomotor circuitries of other related animal models such as lamprey, cat, and Xenopus embryo, we refer readers to prior reviews (lamprey: [5], cat: [6], Xenopus embryo: [7]). The Salamander Nervous System: A Bridge between Fish and Mammalian Models Salamander locomotor circuits include the main features found in all vertebrates (Figure 1A,C). Their...

show abstract

supporting

confidence: 56%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Walking with Salamanders: From Molecules to Biorobotics

Ryczko

Simon

Ijspeert

2020

Trends in Neurosciences

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Recent work has just identified DNs in the mammalian brainstem that influence steering 5 . Given this, it should be possible to work backward from mammalian steering DNs to find points of convergence between memoryand stimulus-directed steering pathways.…”

Section: Integrating Compass-directed Steering and Stimulus-directed mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In mammals, memory-directed navigation depends largely on hippocampal pathways, whereas stimulus-directed navigation depends more on striatal pathways [2][3][4] . Ultimately, both pathways must somehow communicate with motor systems, including the descending neurons in the mammalian brainstem which send steering commands to the spinal cord 5 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neural circuit mechanisms for steering control in walkingDrosophila

Rayshubskiy

2020

Preprint

164

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

During navigation, the brain must continuously integrate external guidance cues with internal spatial maps to update steering commands. However, it has been difficult to link spatial maps with motor control. Here we identify descending "steering" neurons in the Drosophila brain that lie two synapses downstream from the brain's heading direction map in the central complex. These steering neurons predict behavioral turns caused by microstimulation of the spatial map. Moreover, these neurons receive "direct" sensory input that bypasses the central complex, and they predict steering evoked by multimodal stimuli. Unilateral activation of these neurons can promote turning, while bilateral silencing interferes with body and leg movements. In short, these neurons combine internal maps with external cues to predict and influence steering. They represent a key link between cognitive maps, which use an abstract coordinate frame, and motor commands, which use a body-centric coordinate frame.

show abstract

“…However, attaching the physical markers for the motion capture is often not practical for animal studies, as the markers themselves disturb/change the subject's behavior (Nakamura et al, 2016;Mathis et al, 2018;Berger et al, 2020). Thanks to recent advances in machine vision using deep learning, the video-based markerless motion capture has been developed to a level permitting practical use (Mathis et al, 2020), in which an artificial neural network predicts the location of body parts in a video without the requirement for physical markers, and enabled successful behavioral studies in rodents (e.g., Dooley et al, 2020;Cregg et al, 2020;Mathis et al, 2020). Macaque monkeys are an important non-human primate model, particularly in the field of neuroscience (Kalin et al, 2006;Capitanio et al, 2008;Nelson et al, 2008;Watson et al, 2012).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

MacaquePose: A novel ‘in the wild’ macaque monkey pose dataset for markerless motion capture

Labuguen

Matsumoto

Negrete

et al. 2020

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Video-based markerless motion capture permits quantification of an animal’s pose and motion, with a high spatiotemporal resolution in a naturalistic context, and is a powerful tool for analyzing the relationship between the animal’s behaviors and its brain functions. Macaque monkeys are excellent non-human primate models, especially for studying neuroscience. Due to the lack of a dataset allowing training of a deep neural network for the macaque’s markerless motion capture in the naturalistic context, it has been challenging to apply this technology for macaques-based studies. In this study, we created MacaquePose, a novel open dataset with manually labeled body part positions for macaques in naturalistic scenes, consisting of >13,000 images, refined by researchers. We show that the pose estimation performance of an artificial neural network trained with the dataset is close to that of a human-level. The MacaquePose will provide a platform for innovative behavior analysis for non-human primate.

show abstract

Brainstem neurons that command mammalian locomotor asymmetries

Cited by 109 publications

References 71 publications

Walking with Salamanders: From Molecules to Biorobotics

Walking with Salamanders: From Molecules to Biorobotics

Neural circuit mechanisms for steering control in walkingDrosophila

MacaquePose: A novel ‘in the wild’ macaque monkey pose dataset for markerless motion capture

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About