Atlantic Mobility Action Project, Brain Repair Centre, Department of Medical Neuroscience, Life Science Research Institute, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS B3H 4R2, Canada.
Sainsbury Wellcome Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour, University College London, London W1T 4JG, UK.
Int J Mol Sci. 2021 Feb 2;22(3):1467. doi: 10.3390/ijms22031467.
Locomotion is a fundamental animal behavior required for survival and has been the subject of neuroscience research for centuries. In terrestrial mammals, the rhythmic and coordinated leg movements during locomotion are controlled by a combination of interconnected neurons in the spinal cord, referred as to the central pattern generator, and sensory feedback from the segmental somatosensory system and supraspinal centers such as the vestibular system. How segmental somatosensory and the vestibular systems work in parallel to enable terrestrial mammals to locomote in a natural environment is still relatively obscure. In this review, we first briefly describe what is known about how the two sensory systems control locomotion and use this information to formulate a hypothesis that the weight of the role of segmental feedback is less important at slower speeds but increases at higher speeds, whereas the weight of the role of vestibular system has the opposite relation. The new avenues presented by the latest developments in molecular sciences using the mouse as the model system allow the direct testing of the hypothesis.
运动是动物生存所必需的基本行为，也是神经科学研究的一个多世纪以来的课题。在陆地哺乳动物中，运动过程中腿部的节律性和协调性运动是由脊髓中相互连接的神经元组合控制的，这些神经元被称为中枢模式发生器，并且还受到来自节段性躯体感觉系统和中枢神经系统（如前庭系统）的感觉反馈的影响。关于节段性躯体感觉和前庭系统如何协同工作，以使陆地哺乳动物能够在自然环境中运动，目前仍相对不清楚。在这篇综述中，我们首先简要描述了这两个感觉系统如何控制运动，并利用这些信息来提出一个假设，即节段性反馈的作用在较慢的速度下相对不重要，但在较高的速度下会增加，而前庭系统的作用则相反。使用小鼠作为模型系统的分子科学的最新发展提供了新的途径，可以直接检验这一假设。
