Spinal cord

Recognizes highly distinguished research on the brain, spinal cord or peripheral nervous system. Nominations require the official form and a current CV without a full publication list; up to two support letters are welcome. Materials must be in English and received by 15 December 2026.

The study of animal locomotion and neuromechanical control offers valuable insights for advancing research in neuroscience, biomechanics, and robotics. We have developed FARMS (Framework for Animal and Robot Modeling and Simulation), an open-source, interdisciplinary framework, designed to facilitate access to neuromechanical simulations for modeling, simulation, and analysis of animal locomotion and bio-inspired robotic systems. By providing an accessible and user-friendly platform, FARMS aims to lower the barriers for researchers to explore the complex interactions between the nervous system

Artifical neural network (ANN) approaches to motor control commonly adopt generic architectures like fully connected multi-layer perceptrons (MLPs) and recurrent neural networks (RNNs). As such architectures contain few inductive biases, it is common to require priors in the form of rewards, training curricula, imitation data, or trajectory generators. In nature, animals are born with priors in the form of their nervous system's architecture, which has been shaped by evolution to confer innate ability and efficient learning. For instance, a horse can walk within hours of birth and quickly impr

…the electrical activity of the human spinal cord would fulfill an important and still unmet need in both basic and clinical research. In this work, we describe a novel recording and analysis pipeline to obtain non-invasive, high-resolution images of the electrical activity of the spinal cord in humans (Electrical Spinal Imaging, ESI). Using this approach, we provide a detailed description and physiological characterization of the spatiotemporal dynamics of the peripheral, spinal and cortical activity elicited by somatosensory s

…here we have evaluated if the blood-spinal cord barrier (BSCB) was also damaged in this model.Eight-week-old C57Bl/6J male mice were subjected to HG in a centrifuge at 2g for 24h, while control mice stayed in normogravity (N=9/group). Mice were sacrificed after centrifugation, and thoracic spinal cords collected for immunohistochemistry. For

…The responsible excitatory vestibulospinal (VS) pathways have been described in a large variety of species and show striking anatomical and functional resemblances despite strong biomechanical dissimilarities. Here, we investigate in two phylogenetically distant species whether the inhibitory networks surrounding these VS pathways may orchestrate vestibular-originating reflexes to possibly match them to specific biomechanics. Combining various anatomical techniques, we demonstrate the exi

Central pattern generators (CPGs) in the spinal cord control animal locomotion. They generate rhythmically alternating flexor and extensor activities producing coordinated limb movements. Afferent feedback allows animals to adapt locomotion to the environment. Responses of neural activities to afferent feedback stimulation have been previously examined during fictive locomotion in immobilized cats. However, locomotion of behaving animals is governed by dynamic interactions between central neuronal circuits (CPGs), afferent feedback, the musculoskeletal system, and the environment. To study the

…how motor and interneurons in the spinal cord generate these behaviors. Here, utilizing advances in genetic manipulation and behavioral tracking, we dissect the molecular features and contribution of each spinal cord cardinal class to swim versus limb behavior over frog metamorphosis.We devise a high-throughput CRISPR screen, in which we knock ou

…mainly on the motor cortex, and the spinal cord would “simply” be the substrate for the information to be transmitted to the muscle. However, stereotypic features of these movements suggest that some level of control may be exerted from the spinal cord (SC). In this project, we aimed to unveil the presence and location of this hypotetic spinal neuronal network. We inflicted excitotoxic injuries to rats at different cervical SC levels using kainic acid, for exclusively affe

Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) is a neurodegenerative disease characterized by spinal cord and brainstem motor neuron (MN) loss. Axonal transport defects are a common hallmark of MN degeneration and KIF5A, a major component of the axonal transport machinery, has been associated with MN diseases, but its role in SMA has not been elucidated yet. Our aim was to investigate a possible correlation between KIF5A and SMA pathogenesis. Therefore, Western Blot, qRT-PCR and immunohistochemistry analysis were performed to investigate KIF5A and its adaptor protein complex Miro1/Milton expression in the spi

The restrictive element-1 silencing transcription factor (REST) is a transcriptional repressor which acts via epigenetic remodeling to silence numerous target genes. Emerging evidence indicates that REST is a master regulator of neuron-specific genes, not only in neurogenesis and neuronal differentiation, but also in differentiated neurons during postnatal brain development, where it plays a role in fine-tuning of genes involved in synaptic plasticity, and in normal aging, where it promotes neuroprotection by repressing genes involved in oxidative stress and dementia. However, un aberrant REST

…located in the ventral part of the spinal cord are composed of motor neurons and interneurons. In the developing spinal cord, transcriptional regulators, including Lim-Homeodomain (Lim-HD) transcription factors, cooperate to segregate motor neurons and different interneuron subsets with distinct molecular, morphological, and functional characteristics. Based on their high sequence homology and their similar distribution, Lim-HD paralogs of the Lim3 group (Lhx3 and Lhx4)

…cortex and targets in brainstem and spinal cord. While cortical innervation of the spinal cord is crucial for skilled movement, input into the brainstem additionally fine-tunes movement and motor planning. The brainstem receives cortical input either through: 1) cortico-brainstem neurons (CBN) innervate brainstem directly without reaching into the spinal cord, 2) corticospinal neurons (CSN) project to the spinal cord while also branching in brainstem. Distinguishing between these t

The dorsal raphe nucleus (DRN) contains the largest population of serotonergic (5-HT) neurons in the central nervous system. The DRN modulates a wide range of physiological functions and brain states, mostly due to its widespread and heterogeneous projections. Evidence suggests that the DRN comprises different sub-systems with distinct neurotransmitter phenotype, connectivity and function. These sub-systems are difficult to characterize in the complex mammalian DRN. To overcome this, we address these questions in zebrafish larvae, leveraging their simpler and conserved DRN.Here, we establish a

…conducting motor planning, to the spinal cord (SC) implementing its own motor control centres through sensory reflexes. Nevertheless, it is unclear which modulation of the brain commands or of the spinal circuits can generate similar movements in various environments.Here, we addresse

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

Personalized computational modeling is rapidly expanding the landscape of therapeutic possibilities for neurostimulation. However, applications are limited by the computational expense of electrophysiological simulations. Here, we introduce a new method for dramatically reducing these costs while preserving the accuracy of traditional axon simulations.The “activating function” (AF) is a linear quantity derived directly from the extracellular field potential that can predict axonal spike initiation in lieu of compartment-based models [1], but with limited accuracy. Thus, we developed a “general

…suitable to study regeneration of the spinal cord and locomotor-related spinal circuits because it possesses all relevant structures that are found further up the body axis. Using molecular genetic analysis, GCaMP imaging and optogenetics, I aim to investigate the patterning and functionality of the regenerated nervous system on multiple levels from sensory input to activity to motion: (1) projection patterns, connectivity, and muscle innervation within and across muscle segments; (2) swimming behavio

Epidural Electrical Stimulation (EES) of the spinal cord is a promising therapy that has alleviated gait deficits in animal models and patients with Parkinson's disease (PD). Here, we hypothesised that closed-loop stimulation - targeted to specific phases of cortical oscillations - can refine the interaction of EES with pathological network states. For this, we tailored a real-time system that tracks a selected frequency and used it to deliver stimulation pulses timed to ECOG signals from M2 cortex. We tested the stimulation platform in the unilateral 6-OHDA PD rat model, that resulted in modu

Locomotion of animals is controlled by central pattern generators (CPGs) located in the spinal cord. Afferent feedback allows animals to adapt locomotion to the environment. Responses of neural activities to afferent feedback stimulation have been previously examined during fictive locomotion in immobilized cats. However, the locomotion of behaving animals is governed by dynamic interactions between central neuronal circuits, afferent feedback, the musculoskeletal system, and the environment. To study the specific role of afferent feedback in these interactions, we created a neuromusculoskelet

…type are evenly distributed along the spinal cord. While, at later frog stages, level-specific motor columns are added at both thoracic and limb levels. Here, we show rostrocaudal differences in inhibitory and excitatory interneuron populations emerge during frog metamorphosis. This raises the question of when differences in neuronal architecture dev

Despite the well-demonstrated modulatory effect of serotonin on spinal motor circuits, the specific roles and identity of the involved serotonergic neurons remain unclear. This ambiguity owes to the anatomical and neurochemical heterogeneity of the medullary brainstem regions housing the spinally-projecting serotonergic neurons, and to the limited number of studies investigating their connectivity and function cell-specifically.Here, we selectively target the midline serotonergic neurons of the caudal medulla (mCM-5HT) in the mouse to explore their output connectivity in the spinal cord and th

…is a commonly used animal to study the spinal control of movement. Many neuronal populations found in zebrafish are evolutionarily conserved across species, including mammals. Even as early as 4-5 days post fertilization, larval zebrafish display a wide range of swimming speeds measured in tail beat frequencies, making it a great model to study locomotor control. Experimental studies have identified several populations of spinal neurons comp

Dynamic reorganization of neuronal circuits in the spinal dorsal horn is assumed to cause sensitization in the neuropathic pain. In our previous study, brain-enriched guanylate kinase associated-protein (BEGAIN) was identified as an increased protein in the spinal dorsal horn in the neuropathic pain and the mechanical allodynia was attenuated in the BEGAIN-knockout mice. BEAGIN-expressing neurons have not yet been identified because BEGAIN protein is detected in highly localized dendritic regions, not in the cell body. To identify BEGAIN-expressing neurons, double in situ hybridization with RN