Topic: motor neurons

Animals rely on an internal sense of body position and movement to effectively control motor behaviour. This sense of proprioception is mediated by diverse populations of internal mechanosensory neurons distributed throughout the body. My lab is trying to understand how proprioceptive stimuli are detected by sensory neurons, integrated and transformed in central circuits, and used to guide motor output. We approach these questions using genetic tools, in vivo two-photon imaging, and patch-clamp electrophysiology in Drosophila. We recently found that the axons of fly leg proprioceptors are o

Energy efficiency and robustness to noise for long-distance communication are often cited as reasons to the question of why the brain uses digital communication in the form of spiking neurons [1,2]. However, a quantitative and systematic analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of spikes in terms of communication, computation or control is still missing. Here, we approach the question from a control perspective and systematically compare event-based control with analog control. In particular, we view motor neurons as controllers that act on muscle fibers through their twitch response kern