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Motor systems

Mice get manual

Nature Reviews Neuroscience volume 18, page 512 (2017)Cite this article

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The corticospinal tract (CST) in primates descends in the ventral and lateral portions of the spinal cord, whereas in adult mice, this tract descends only in the dorsal spinal cord. Moreover, unlike adult primates, adult rodents do not show monosynaptic connections between the cortex and motor neurons (CM connections).

The authors hypothesized that, in mice, CM connections may initially form but be subsequently eliminated. Indeed, rabies virus-mediated tracing of inputs to the forelimb muscles in early postnatal mice revealed monosynaptic inputs from the motor cortex. During early postnatal development, corticospinal axons in the ventral and lateral parts of the spinal cord (vlCST projections) and in the dorsal spinal cord formed CM contacts; however, the vlCST projections were no longer detectable by postnatal day 14 (P14).

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References

  1. Gu, Z. et al. Control of species-dependent cortico-motoneuronal connections underlying manual dexterity. Science 357, 400–457 (2017)

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  1. Natasha Bray
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Bray, N. Mice get manual. Nat Rev Neurosci 18, 512 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn.2017.108

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