Abstract
The spinal circuits that control movement are organized around the locomotor CPG, a network of spinal interneurons and motor neurons that produce rhythmic locomotor activity the absence of sensory feedback and descending motor commands. The locomotor CPG is however a flexible neural network that has the capacity to generate a wide range a range of motor behaviours. Embodiment of locomotor CPG shapes these behaviours by attuning the output of the locomotor CPG to the physical features of the body, the terrain in which it is moving, and competing behavioural demands. This is achieved by the integrative interplay between state-dependent sensory feedback and descending supraspinal control. It is also dependent on ascending pathways that provide moment to moment updates to the brain on the state of the body and ongoing spinal motor activity. This talk will discuss recent efforts by the Goulding lab to map the spinal sensorimotor circuitry and ascending spinal pathways that control movement so as to provide an outline of the underlying functional logic of sensorimotor integration at the level of the spinal cord.
Biography
Martyn Goulding grew up in New Zealand where he earned his undergraduate degrees together with his PhD in molecular and cellular biology at the University of Auckland. He then undertook postdoctoral training with Peter Gruss at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Goettingen, before spending 6 months in the lab of Andrew Lumsden FRS and moving to the Salk Institute in 1993. His early research was focused on the characterizing the role of the Pax genes in the dorsoventral patterning of the neural tube and somitic mesoderm. Upon joining the Salk Institute he set out to define the developmental programs that pattern and specify neuronal identity in the developing spinal cord. His lab then went on to functionally characterize many of the genetically-defined interneuron cell types that comprise the locomotor CPG and determine their role in patterning the locomotor rhythm in the isolated spinal cord and walking behaviours in awake mice. More recently, his lab has pioneered the functional characterization of dorsal interneuron cell types that integrate sensory feedback information from cutaneous and proprioceptive mechanoreceptors. Current efforts are directed at defining their contribution a range of protective and corrective reflexes and the mapping of ascending spinal pathways that are important for touch, proprioception and motor control.