Motor neuron articles within Nature

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  • Article |

    Single motor neurons in Drosophila are stimulated to show that they direct head movements towards specific postures rather than generating fixed movement vectors, suggesting that the brain controls movements through a continuing proprioceptive–motor loop.

    • Benjamin Gorko
    • , Igor Siwanowicz
    •  & Stephen J. Huston
  • Article
    | Open Access

    In the Drosophila central-pattern-generating neural network, a mechanism for network desynchronization relying on weak electrical synapses and specific excitability dynamics of the coupled neurons translates unpatterned premotor input into stereotyped neuronal firing with fixed sequences of cell activation, ensuring stable wingbeat power.

    • Silvan Hürkey
    • , Nelson Niemeyer
    •  & Carsten Duch
  • Article |

    A population of spinal interneurons that form axo–axonic connections with the terminals of proprioceptive afferents are shown to mediate presynaptic inhibition; their ablation elicits harmonic oscillations during goal-directed forelimb movements, which can be modelled as the consequence of an increase in sensory feedback gain.

    • Andrew J. P. Fink
    • , Katherine R. Croce
    •  & Eiman Azim
  • Article |

    Cervical propriospinal neurons (PNs) form a genetically accessible subclass of V2a interneurons that convey both premotor output and precerebellar copy signals; their ablation in mice impairs reaching movements selectively, and activation of their internal copy projection recruits a rapid cerebellar feedback loop that modulates forelimb movement.

    • Eiman Azim
    • , Juan Jiang
    •  & Thomas M. Jessell
  • Article |

    Inactivating the CLP1 RNA kinase in mice leads to a progressive loss of motor neurons, through a mechanism related to the accumulation of a novel set of small RNA fragments derived from aberrant processing of tyrosine pre-transfer RNA.

    • Toshikatsu Hanada
    • , Stefan Weitzer
    •  & Josef M. Penninger