Sensorimotor pathways involved in interjoint reflex action of an insect leg

Hess, Dietmar; Büschges, Ansgar

doi:10.1002/(sici)1097-4695(199712)33:7<891::aid-neu3>3.0.co;2-3

Cited by 44 publications

(38 citation statements)

References 56 publications

(13 reference statements)

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“…In stick insects, inter-joint leg reflexes serve to influence the timing of joint cycles, thereby creating coordinated leg movements (Hess and Büschges, 1997;Akay and Büschges, 2006). During turning and backward walking movements, the signs of these reflexes can change resulting in altered joint coordination in specific legs (Akay et al, 2007;Hellekes et al, 2012).…”

Section: Interactions With Thoracic Neuronssupporting

confidence: 92%

Neural activity in the central complex of the cockroach brain is linked to turning behaviors

Guo

Ritzmann

2012

Journal of Experimental Biology

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SUMMARYAn animal moving through complex terrain must consider sensory cues around it and alter its movements accordingly. In the arthropod brain, the central complex (CC) receives highly preprocessed sensory information and sends outputs to premotor regions, suggesting that it may play a role in the central control of oriented locomotion. We performed tetrode recordings within the CC in cockroaches walking on an air-suspended ball to examine the role of the CC in turning behaviors. When a rod was placed near the cockroachʼs head, the cockroach touched the rod repeatedly with one or both antennae before locomotion was initiated. Some CC units responded to self-generated antennal contact with the object, but at lower levels compared with externally imposed antennal stimulation. The neural activity of other CC units responded to locomotion. We found that some CC units showed discrete firing fields corresponding to specific locomotion states. We also found that changes in firing rate of some CC units preceded changes in turning speed in one direction but not the other. Furthermore, such biased units were located in the side of the brain ipsilateral to the direction of the turning speed they could predict. Moreover, electrical stimulation of the CC elicited or modified locomotion, and the direction of some evoked locomotion could be predicted by the response property of locomotion-predictive units near the stimulation site. Therefore, our results suggest that, at the population level, asymmetrical activity in the CC precedes and influences turning behavior. Supplementary material available online at

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Section: Interactions With Thoracic Neuronssupporting

confidence: 92%

Neural activity in the central complex of the cockroach brain is linked to turning behaviors

Guo

Ritzmann

2012

Journal of Experimental Biology

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“…This is somewhat in contrast to the interpretation that the composition of stereotypic avoidance movements might be due to strong interjoint coupling during reflex action. For example, in the stick insect, simulated flexion of the tibia by elongation of the femoral chordotonal organ depolarises trochanteral levator motoneurones in the active animal (Hess and Büschges, 1997). Inter-joint coupling was also found in the coxo-basipodite chordotonal organ of the crayfish (LeRay and Cattaert, 1997), indicating a common principle in arthropods.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Perturbation of leg protraction causes context-dependent modulation of inter-leg coordination, but not of avoidance reflexes

Ebeling

Dürr

2006

Journal of Experimental Biology

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The central requirement for legged locomotion is the simultaneous control of propulsion, clearance above ground and balance of the body frame. Apart from solving this multiple control problem, the neural controller needs to be adaptive in order to account for varying physical conditions of the environment, such as slope and compliance of the substrate, but also for changes in behavioural context of the animal. For example: whereas control of a light, running insect with low clearance may well entirely rely on centrally generated rhythms and inherent viscoelastic properties of the musculoskeletal system known as 'preflexes' (Jindrich and All animals capable of legged locomotion execute fast, adaptive compensatory movements in response to perturbation of a step cycle. In terms of motor control, such adaptive behaviour typically involves changes in the kinematics of the perturbed limb as well as changes in coordination between legs. Moreover, the unpredictable variety of real life situations implies that compensatory responses should be sensitive to the behavioural context of the animal. We have investigated the extent to which the compensatory response of a walking stick insect (Carausius morosus) adapts in parallel to strong contextdependent adaptation of step kinematics and inter-leg coordination. The behavioural contexts we chose were straight walking and visually induced curve walking, for both of which the steady state limb kinematics and interleg coupling strengths were known. In case of curve walking, we further distinguished contexts according to whether the inner or the outer leg was perturbed. The three contexts differed strongly with respect to the set of joint actions before perturbation. Upon mechanical perturbation of front leg protraction, we studied contextdependent differences in a local avoidance reflex of the perturbed leg, as well as in coordination mechanisms that couple the step cycles of the perturbed leg to its unperturbed neighbours.In all three walking contexts, obstacle contact caused an avoidance movement of the front leg that deviated from the unperturbed swing trajectory. Swing duration was increased while step distance was decreased; however, both effects vanished in the subsequent unperturbed step. The prevailing immediate reaction of the three leg joints were retraction of the coxa (>76%), levation of the femur (>80%), and flexion of the tibia (>80%), regardless of the behavioural context and, therefore, joint action prior to perturbation. Moreover, activation of each one of these joint actions was shown to be independent of the other two. Thus, local avoidance reflexes are not modulated by the descending visual information that causes transition from straight to curve walking, but are composed of context-independent joint actions.Perturbation of the front leg also caused significant shifts of the touch-down position of the perturbed leg and of its unperturbed neighbours. If the inner front leg was perturbed, this shift could persist until the subsequent step. Perturbation affected...

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“…Differing from biological data (Cruse et al 1993;Hess and Büschges 1997;Bucher et al 2003), the height control module was not only active during stance but also during swing phase. Since it did not have exclusive access to the CTr motor neurons reasonable walking behavior was generated nevertheless, including kinematics similar to stick insect data (see above).…”

Section: Magnitude Controlmentioning

confidence: 99%

Deriving neural network controllers from neuro-biological data: implementation of a single-leg stick insect controller

2011

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This article presents modular recurrent neural network controllers for single legs of a biomimetic six-legged robot equipped with standard DC motors. Following arguments of Ekeberg et al. (Arthropod Struct Dev 33:287-300, 2004), completely decentralized and sensori-driven neuro-controllers were derived from neuro-biological data of stick-insects. Parameters of the controllers were either hand-tuned or optimized by an evolutionary algorithm. Employing identical controller structures, qualitatively similar behaviors were achieved for robot and for stick insect simulations. For a wide range of perturbing conditions, as for instance changing ground height or up- and downhill walking, swing as well as stance control were shown to be robust. Behavioral adaptations, like varying locomotion speeds, could be achieved by changes in neural parameters as well as by a mechanical coupling to the environment. To a large extent the simulated walking behavior matched biological data. For example, this was the case for body support force profiles and swing trajectories under varying ground heights. The results suggest that the single-leg controllers are suitable as modules for hexapod controllers, and they might therefore bridge morphological- and behavioral-based approaches to stick insect locomotion control.

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Sensorimotor pathways involved in interjoint reflex action of an insect leg

Cited by 44 publications

References 56 publications

Neural activity in the central complex of the cockroach brain is linked to turning behaviors

Neural activity in the central complex of the cockroach brain is linked to turning behaviors

Perturbation of leg protraction causes context-dependent modulation of inter-leg coordination, but not of avoidance reflexes

Deriving neural network controllers from neuro-biological data: implementation of a single-leg stick insect controller

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