The c-fos immunohistochemical method of activity-dependent labelling was used to localise locomotor activated neurons in the adult cat spinal cord. In decerebrate cats, treadmill locomotion was evoked by electrical stimulation of the mesencephalic locomotor region (MLR). Spontaneous or MLR-evoked fictive locomotion was produced in decerebrate animals paralysed with a neuromuscular blocking agen...

To examine whether the cerebrum is essential for producing the rapid cardiovascular adjustment at the beginning of overground locomotion, we examined heart rate (HR), mean arterial blood pressure (MAP), and integrated electromyogram (iEMG) of the forelimb triceps brachialis muscle in freely moving decerebrate cats during locomotion. Two to four days after decerebration surgery performed at the ...

Operant conditioning of a spinal cord reflex can improve locomotion in rats and humans with incomplete spinal cord injury. This study examined the persistence of its beneficial effects. In rats in which a right lateral column contusion injury had produced asymmetric locomotion, up-conditioning of the right soleus H-reflex eliminated the asymmetry while down-conditioning had no effect. After the...

This paper introduces a system for expressive locomotion generation that takes as input a set of sample locomotion clips and a motion path. Significantly, the system only requires a single sample of straight-path locomotion for each style modeled and can produce output locomotion for an arbitrary path with arbitrary motion transition points. For efficient locomotion generation, we represent eac...

During locomotion many segmental hindlimb reflex pathways serve not only to regulate the excitability of local groups of motoneurones, but also to control the basic operation of the central pattern-generating circuitry responsible for locomotion. This is accomplished through a reorganization of reflexes that includes the suppression of reflex pathways operating at rest and the recruitment durin...

Inspired by kangaroo’s locomotion, we report on developing a kangaroo-style hopping robot. Unlike bipeds, quadrupeds, or hexapods which alternate the legs for forward locomotion, the kangaroo uses both legs synchronously and generates the forward locomotion by continuous hopping behavior, and the tail actively balances the unwanted angular momentum generated by the leg motion. In this work, we ...

Locomotion requires the proper sequencing of neural activity to start, maintain, and stop it. Recently, brainstem neurons were shown to specifically stop locomotion in mammals. However, the cellular properties of these neurons and their activity during locomotion are still unknown. Here, we took advantage of the lamprey model to characterize the activity of a cell population that we now show to...

Cortical responses to sensory stimuli are modulated by behavioral state. In the primary visual cortex (V1), visual responses of pyramidal neurons increase during locomotion. This response gain was suggested to be mediated through inhibitory neurons, resulting in the disinhibition of pyramidal neurons. Using in vivo two-photon calcium imaging in layers 2/3 and 4 in mouse V1, we reveal that locom...

A recent experiment [Vandenberghe, N., Zhang, J. & Childress, S. (2004) J. Fluid Mech. 506, 147-155] has shown that an axle-mounted blade can spontaneously rotate when oscillated (or "flapped") above a critical frequency in a fluid. To understand the nature of flapping locomotion we study numerically the dynamics of a simple body, flapped up and down within a viscous fluid and free to move hori...

Activation of ankle extensor group Ia muscle spindle or Ib tendon organ afferents during locomotion can prolong and enhance hindlimb extensor motoneuron activity. A growing body of evidence suggests that these group I evoked reflexes not only compensate for a changing environment but also help shape extensor activity during normal, unperturbed locomotion. In this paper we review four mechanisms...