Student: So you have found a lot of gold nuggets in all these posts.
Professor:. So I’ve grouped these 14 posts in the following:
- Basic movement mechanisms
- Motor synergies and patterns
- Coordinated adaptation to ‘limping’
- The sense of effort
In this post I’ll dig into the first three groups and save The Sense of Effort group for the initial post of next trimester.
1. Basic movement mechanisms
Professor: A hugh gold nugget is from the second post, NOPE; Spinal Interneurons are NOT Activated In A Graded Manner.
This dropping out of interneurons is the nugget found by McLean et al. (2008).
- The graded recruitment of motoneurons continues to be a universal phenomenon.
- However, different locomotor speeds involve some shifts in the set of active interneurons.
- Some interneurons active at slow speeds are silenced at faster ones and this pattern occurs both within and between excitatory classes.
- Thus, the interneurons behave differently from the motoneurons with respect to recruitment because the motoneurons only add neurons to the active pool as speed increases, while the interneurons add new ones while removing others that were active at slower speeds
Student: The active set of interneurons continuously shifts with changes in speed for the zebra fish and perhaps as a general principle for all vertebrates. Does this happen with fatigue?
Professor: Very intriguing question, and the answer(s) I hope will come in the next set of posts.
Student: “What Is the Primal Movement Starter?” Classy title; how come the term “primal”?
Professor: Consider escaping from the sabertooth tiger as an ancient survival tactic. The Trigger Command Neuron is even found in a primordial creature like the leech.
