The Segmental Motor System

by Marc D. Binder

Description

This volume presents a broad range of knowledge about the organization of the segmental motor apparatus of mammals. Over the past 30 years, the mammalian segmental motor system has served as a template for research on neural trophism, synaptic function and connectivity, neuronal recognition,and neuronal modeling, and has provided the definitive neural aggregation, the motoneuron pool. In addition, a number of important experimental and analytical techniques, including intracellular show more recording, signal averaging, linear systems analysis, conditioning-testing spatial facilitation andocclusion, and excitability testing, have emerged from this body of research to become important components of the experimental armamentarium of biologists working throughout the nervous system. The book acknowledges the seminal contributions of Professor Elwood Henneman to this field and toneuroscience in general, and provides a systematic discussion of some of the fundamental contemporary issues in motor control. It addresses such questions as the intrinsic properties of motoneurons and muscle fibers; the phenomenon of orderly motor unit recruitment and its underlying mechanisms;the neural-mechanical correlations between motoneurons and the muscle units the innervate; and the analysis of synaptic inputs to motoneuron pools. In focusing on these issues, the volume not only provides comprehensive coverage of the functional organization of the motoneuron pool and its targetissue, skeletal muscle, but also illuminates the extensive ramifications that research in this area has had on neurobiology. show less