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Action-based body maps in the spinal cord emerge from a transitory floating organization.

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Author

Summary, in English

During development primary afferents grow into and establish neuronal connections in the spinal cord, thereby forming the basis for how we perceive sensory information and control our movements. In the somatosensory system, myriads of primary afferents, conveying information from different body locations and sensory modalities, get organized in the dorsal horn of the spinal cord so that spinal multisensory circuits receive topographically ordered information. How this intricate pathfinding is brought about during development is, however, largely unknown. Here we show that a body representation closely related to motor patterns emerges from a transitory floating and plastic organization through profound activity-dependent rewiring, involving both sprouting and elimination of afferent connections, and provide evidence for cross-modality interactions in the alignment of the multisensory input. Thus, far from being inborn and stereotypic, the dorsal horn of the spinal cord now appears to be a highly adaptive brain-body interface.

Publishing year

2008

Language

English

Pages

5494-5503

Publication/Series

The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience

Volume

28

Issue

21

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Society for Neuroscience

Topic

  • Neurosciences

Status

Published

Research group

  • Neurophysiology
  • Neuronano Research Center (NRC)

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 1529-2401