Generation of Metachronal Motor Patterns in Segmental Nervous Systems

所有节段性动物的运动都是由重复的一系列运动组成的，这些运动在动物身体的不同部位之间以超时的方式协调。布赖恩·马尔洛尼博士将进行的这项工作的目标是描述控制一组节段性肢体--小龙虾的腹部游泳者的异时性运动的神经元的结构、整合特性和突触组织，并描述它们所在的神经节是如何组织的。这些实验将使我们能够比较节段间棘波协调器和非棘波双侧局部协调器的特点，并观察非棘波神经元在这些运动的产生中是否扮演与棘波中间神经元根本不同的角色。他们将测试一项关于同步双侧模式产生电路的神经元特性的假设。他们将发现节间回路，这些回路以不同的时间协调不同的肢体，并允许我们将这些回路与其他动物中功能相同的回路进行比较。这项工作很重要，因为它将产生更多关于协调运动的知识，并可能提供关于人类脊柱反射的有价值的信息。

Locomotion in all segmented animals consists of a repeated series of movements that are metachronously coordinated in different segments of the animal's body. The objectives of the work to be performed by Dr. Brian Mulloney are to describe the structure, integrative properties and synaptic organization of the neurons that control the metachronous movements of one set of segmental limbs, the abdominal swimmerets of the crayfish and to describe how the ganglia in which they occur are organized. These experiments will allow us to compare the characteristics of spiking intersegmental coordinators and non.spiking bilateral local coordinators, and to see if the non.spiking neurons play roles fundamentally different from those of the spiking interneurons in the generation of these movements. They will test an hypothesis about the properties of neurons that synchronize bilateral pattern generating circuits. They will discover the intersegmental circuits that coordinate different limbs metachronously, and permit us to compare these circuits with functionally equivalent circuits in other animals. This work is important because it will yield more knowledge which is missing about coordinated movements and may supply valuable information regarding spinal reflexes in man.