In human and animal motor control several sensory organs contribute to a network of sensory pathways modulating the motion depending on the task and the phase of execution to generate daily motor tasks such as locomotion. To better understand the individual and joint contribution of reflex pathways in locomotor tasks, we developed a neuromuscular model that describes hopping movements. In this ...

Higher-order thalamic nuclei receive input from both the cerebral cortex and prethalamic sensory pathways. However, at rest these nuclei appear silent due to inhibitory input from extrathalamic regions, and it has therefore remained unclear how sensory gating of these nuclei takes place. In the rodent, the ventral division of the zona incerta (ZIv) serves as a relay station within the paralemni...

The enteric nervous system can generate complex motor patterns independently of the central nervous system. The ascending enteric reflex pathway consists of sensory neurons, long chains of a single class of orally directed interneuron and excitatory motor neurons. Because of the importance of this pathway in peristalsis, it was modelled from the firing of sensory neurons through to muscle membr...

Central post-stroke pain (CPSP) was first described by Dejerine and Roussy as a consequence of stroke-related lesions in the thalamus [1]. CPSP can develops after both haemorrhagic and ischemic lesions occurring at any level of somato-sensory pathway of the brain, including medulla, thalamus, and cerebral cortex. CPSP is characterized by either spontaneous or evoked unpleasant sensory described...

Caenorhabditis elegans polycystins LOV-1 and PKD-2 are expressed in the male-specific HOB neuron, and are necessary for sensation of the hermaphrodite vulva during mating. We demonstrate that male vulva location behavior and expression of lov-1 and pkd-2 in the ciliated sensory neuron HOB require the activities of transcription factor EGL-46 and to some extent also EGL-44. This EGL-46- regulate...

Neural encoding of sensory signals involves both linear and nonlinear processes. Determining which nonlinear operations are implemented by neural systems is crucial to understanding sensory processing. Here, we ask if demodulation, the process used to decode AM radio signals, describes how Y cells in the cat LGN nonlinearly encode the visual scene. In response to visual AM signals across a wide...

Chronic pain is a debilitating problem, and insights in the neurobiology of chronic pain are needed for the development of novel pain therapies. A genome-wide association study implicated the 5p15.2 region in chronic widespread pain. This region includes the coding region for FAM173B, a functionally uncharacterized protein. We demonstrate here that FAM173B is a mitochondrial lysine methyltransf...

The cAMP-response element-binding protein (CREB) plays an important role in visual cortical plasticity that follows the disruption of sensory activity, as induced by dark rearing (DR). Recent findings indicate that the dorsal lateral geniculate nucleus (dLGN) of thalamus is also sensitive to altered sensory activity. DR disrupts retinogeniculate synaptic strength and pruning in mice, but only w...

The requirement for transcription during long-lasting plasticity indicates that signals generated at the synapse must be transported to the nucleus. We have investigated whether the classical active nuclear import pathway mediates intracellular retrograde signal transport in Aplysia sensory neurons and rodent hippocampal neurons. We found that importins localize to distal neuronal processes, in...