Seeing the forest and the trees - Role of single neurons and networks in locomotion

Animals need to carefully calibrate the timing, speed and direction of their movements to ensure their survival. We probe how the nervous system generates commands that result in appropriate movements. In the spinal cord, we found that motor neurons are capable of adaptively changing their outputs so as to alter the speed of larval swims. This mechanism of speed regulation, relying on amplitude modulation of swim commands, operates at the very last step in the nervous system, by-passing all other mechanisms of speed control. Neurons in the cerebellum can learn repetitive environmental stimulus patterns and generate predictions about their timing. This population level predictive encoding leads to faster response times for the larva. Our studies reveal encoding at the single neuronal and population levels leading to appropriately timed and co-ordinated locomotion. 

References:

1. Sengupta M and Thirumalai V, eLife. 2015 Sep 29;4. doi: 10.7554/eLife.09158. 

2. Jha U and Thirumalai V, Current Biology, 9 March 2020, Pages 788-801.e3.