Journal
NATURE NEUROSCIENCE
Volume 17, Issue 4, Pages 586-U206Publisher
NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP
DOI: 10.1038/nn.3675
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Funding
- George E. Hewitt Foundation for Medical Research
- US National Research Service Award fellowship from US National Institutes of Health NINDS
- Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator
- National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke [R37NS037116]
- Marshall Foundation
- Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation
- National Science Foundation
- Benjamin H. Lewis chair in neuroscience
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The rich behavioral repertoire of animals is encoded in the CNS as a set of motorneuron activation patterns, also called 'motor synergies'. However, the neurons that orchestrate these motor programs as well as their cellular properties and connectivity are poorly understood. Here we identify a population of molecularly defined motor synergy encoder (MSE) neurons in the mouse spinal cord that may represent a central node in neural pathways for voluntary and reflexive movement. This population receives direct inputs from the motor cortex and sensory pathways and, in turn, has monosynaptic outputs to spinal motorneurons. Optical stimulation of MSE neurons drove reliable patterns of activity in multiple motor groups, and we found that the evoked motor patterns varied on the basis of the rostrocaudal location of the stimulated MSE. We speculate that these neurons comprise a cellular network for encoding coordinated motor output programs.
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