While limb motor deficits of Parkinson's disease are well characterized, the effects of striatal dopamine depletion on the motor cortex is poorly understood. We therefore aimed to 1) examine the effects of striatal dopamine depletion on forelimb function and cortical motor map topography and 2) explore potential relationships between forelimb function and cortical movement representations in an...

Unilateral forelimb sensorimotor cortex lesions in adult rats produce a compensatory hyper-reliance on the forelimb ipsilateral to the lesion and temporally related glial and neural plasticity in the contralateral homotopic cortex. Recently, we found that these lesions enhance acquisition of a motor skills task with the ipsilateral, non-impaired, forelimb in comparison to shams. This effect mig...

Rats can generate a rich array of forepaw and forelimb movements that are similar, although not as complex, to those produced by human and non-human primates. When reaching for food for instance, rats display skilled movements of the forelimb and the paw, therefore, making them attractive models to validate strategies aimed at the recovery of fine motor control. Surprisingly however, few anatom...

Few quantitative data exist to describe the activity of the distal muscles of the equine forelimb during locomotion, and there is an incomplete understanding of the functional roles of the majority of the forelimb muscles. Based on morphology alone it would appear that the larger proximal muscles perform the majority of work in the forelimb, whereas the smaller distal muscles fulfil supplementa...

In this study, three-dimensional landmark-based methods of geometric morphometrics are used for estimating the influence of phylogeny, allometry and locomotor performance on forelimb shape in living and extinct carnivorans (Mammalia, Carnivora). The main objective is to investigate morphological convergences towards similar locomotor strategies in the shape of the major forelimb bones. Results ...

Several experimental models of cervical spinal cord injury (SCI) have been developed recently to assess the consequences of damage to this level of the spinal cord (Pearse et al., 2005, Gensel et al., 2006, Anderson et al., 2009), as the majority of human SCI occur here (Young, 2010; www.sci-info-pages.com). Behavioral deficits include loss of forelimb function due to damage to the white matter...

Reorganization of the primary somatosensory cortex (S-I) forelimb-stump representation of rats that sustained neonatal forelimb removal is characterized by the expression of hindlimb inputs that are revealed when cortical GABA receptors are pharmacologically blocked. Recent work has shown that the majority of these inputs are transmitted from the S-I hindlimb representation to the forelimb-stum...

The cylinder test is routinely used to predict focal ischemic damage to the forelimb motor cortex in rodents. When placed in the cylinder, rodents explore by rearing and touching the walls of the cylinder with their forelimb paws for postural support. Following ischemic injury to the forelimb sensorimotor cortex, rats rely more heavily on their unaffected forelimb paw for postural support resul...

OBJECTIVE To investigate continuous wavelet transformation and neural network classification of gait data for detecting forelimb lameness in horses. ANIMALS 12 adult horses with mild forelimb lameness. PROCEDURE Position of the head and right forelimb foot, metacarpophalangeal (ie, fetlock), carpal, and elbow joints was determined by use of kinematic analysis before and after palmar digital...