TY - JOUR
T1 - Action-based body maps in the spinal cord emerge from a transitory floating organization.
AU - Granmo, Marcus
AU - Petersson, Per
AU - Schouenborg, Jens
PY - 2008
Y1 - 2008
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
U2 - 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0651-08.2008
DO - 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0651-08.2008
M3 - Article
C2 - 18495883
SN - 1529-2401
VL - 28
SP - 5494
EP - 5503
JO - The Journal of Neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience
JF - The Journal of Neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience
IS - 21
ER -