Topic: motor arrest

Locomotion is an essential and conserved movement that allows humans and animals to interact with their surroundings. Although locomotion appears seemingly effortless, it is an intricate motor behavior that requires the orchestration of several supraspinal and spinal neuronal substrates activating many axial and limb muscles. Thus enabling organisms to navigate through and adapt to their environment. Such context-dependent and episodic locomotor behaviors require an interruption or arrest to adjust the movement toward the aimed goal. However, the neural pathways of motor arrest behaviors upon

The Pedunculopontine nucleus (PPN) has long been associated with locomotion as part of themesencephalic locomotor region, and in arousal and sleep/wake states as part of theascending reticular activating system. In addition, several studies indicate that the PPN isinvolved in several other functions such as path integration, visual and auditory processing,attention and action-selection. As it was recently discovered thatoptogenetic stimulation of the rostral PPN can induce full body motor arrest, we wanted to investigateif this behavior was limited to motor output, or if sensory input was halt

Evading threats relies on deploying complex avoidance strategies such as deciding between escape and motor arrest. Although studies across vertebrates indicate that the brainstem is critical for motor arrest, the mechanisms remain elusive. A recent study in zebrafish showed that upon sensory-motor mismatch, passivity involves noradrenergic signaling eliciting a brain-wide glial calcium wave. However, it remains unknown how noradrenergic activation translates into subsequent glial calcium waves and provokes motor arrest. Our working hypothesis is that noradrenergic neurons integrate intensive s