Motor systems Flashcards
What colour is white matter?
beige
Adult human gross brain anatomy (dont need to know but for scale)
- Human CNS- most complex system known
- 1011 neurones -100,000,000,000, 100 billion
- >1014 synapses- 100,000,000,000,000, 100 trillion
Lateral view of the cerebral cortex in human, cat and rat
nb. relative increase in human cortex that is not primarily motor or sensory cotex
Section of the brain and the homunculus
What do the following allow?
- Action potential
- Synapses
Action potentials: allow rapid signalling within one neurone.
Synapses: allow convergence and divergence of signals between different neurones
What are the layers of organisations of the cells?
Layers
Cell body layers (e.g. pyramidale)
Molecular layers- mainly neurites and synapse
Six layers in cortex
What are the cell types and their subtypes ?
Cell types
- Neurons:
Excitatory / Inhibitory
morphology / location
- Glia
astrocytes
oligodendrocytes (cns)
Schwann cells (pns)
microglia
Neuronal morphology- evolved for fast information transfer
- Where are APs transduced?
- What does the structure of myelinated axons allow?
Nervous systems scales- distances and speed
What types of voltage recordings can be taken?
Where is the energy from?
What does it drive?
- Record membrane potentials, APs, EPSPs, IPSP
- Energy from mitochondria
- Drives ion pumps
What is the cell membrane in referance to conductivity and composition?
Cell membrane is nonconductive lipid membrane bilayer
How do all ions flux?
All ion flux via protein channels- Voltage gated and neurotransmitters-gated
Differential membrane conductance sets up membrane potential
Passive (electrotonic) properties of membranes- signals fade with distance/ capacitance requires energy to change voltage
Passive membrane properties
Simple electrical model of a neuron?
Voltage clamp: determination of ionic basis of action potential
Sir John Carew Eccles, Alan Lloyd Hodgkin and Andrew Fielding Huxley 1963 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
“for their discoveries concerning the ionic mechanisms involved in excitation and inhibition in the peripheral and central portions of the nerve cell membrane”
Seminal Paper:
A Quantitative Description of Membrane Current and its Application to Conduction and Excitation in Nerve, J. Physiol. (I952) 117, 500-544
A. L. HODGKIN AND A. F. HUXLEY
Voltage-clamp
Whats isolated using the voltage clamp technique?
What does this ensure?
- The currents through the different sets of voltage-gated channels that are responsible for the AP can be isolated using the Voltage-Clamp technique.
- This ensures the membrane voltage is controlled at pre-set values, and the currents that flow can be measured
Whats Patch clamp?
What can it be used to resolve?
- A form of voltage clamp that allows the measurement of the properties of individual ion channels
- It can resolve the ion flow through single multimeric membrane-protein molecules of the order of 1 pico Amp - (1x10-12Amp)
What single channel properties can be measured?
- i - current
- g – conductance
- Open times
- Closed times
- Probabilities
- Voltage-Dependence
Voltage clamp
Saltatory AP transmission in myelinated axons
nb. V-gated sodium channels at Nodes of Ranvier produce AP inward current
At the neuromuscular junction, what determines which muscle is stimulated?
Modality is coded by WHICH axon is activated
WHICH AXON determines which muscle (or another effector) is stimulated
Summary of lecture 11
- CNS functions are localised (eg. motor/sensory)
- Within these areas there is Topological mapping
- Nervous system has had to evolve fast long-distance communication - evolutionary pressure
- Action Potentials in myelinated axons provide fast long-distance signalling from CNS to peripheral muscles
- Modality coded by which axon / Intensity by number APs
Overall organisation of neural structures involved in the control of movement
Tell me about muscle when its relaxed
Without stimulus, muscle is relaxed - high membrane conductance (at rest theres many ion channels open that let chloride though) and negative membrane potential (-70 to -90mV)
What are muscles stimulated to contract by?
Cholinergic (ACh) neuronal inputs at neuro muscualr junctions (nmj)
Is there a direct inhibition of muscle?
No direct inhibition of muscle- inhibition of motor neurons in spinal cord (glycinergic drive)
What is skeletal muscle force controlled by?
- rate of stimulation of motor units
- Number of motor units stimulated
- Properties of motor units stimulated
Where are alpha-motor neurones (aka lowe motor neurons) located?
What do they direct?
What do they occur in?
- Located in ventral horn of spinal cord
- Direct innervation of muscle
- Occur in “pools” driving different muscles
How are alpha motor neurons organised?
Topographically organised
- Grey matter gives the butterfly shape
- Interneurones projects are within a given structure
Motor neuron pools in vental horn
- Transverse sections of spinal cord showing motor pools expressing single transcription factors (in red). Motor pools are defined by retrograde labeling of motor neurons (in green) after tracer injections into individual muscles in chick forelimb. Image: Jeremy
- Transverse sections of chick spinal cord stained with antibodies against transcription factors expressed in motor neurons. Motor neuron occupy the ventral-lateral region of the spinal cord. Image: Jeremy Dasen, HHMI at Columbia University.
How many alpha-motor neurons are each muscle fibre stimulated by?
Each muscle fibre ONLY innervated by ONE α–motor neurone
How many fibres can one alpha-motor neuron innervate?
one alpha-motor neuron can innervate many muscle fibres
How many muscle fibres can one motor neuron innervate?
- ONE α–motor neurone PLUS all its muscle fibres
- Muscle fibre is only innervated by only one motor unit
- Motor units can go to several fibres, but each fibre is only innervated by one motor unit
- Motor neuron can innervate many muscle fibres
Transmission and neuro muscular junction- nmj/ qunatal release ACh
Control of muscle force: stimulation rate from alpha-motor neurones and muscle response
Describe what is seen in the graphs
- Force of muscle contraction increases with stimulation rate
- Single motor nerve stimuli produce individual twitches that completely relax between stimuli
- Rapidly repeated stimuli lead to increased force as muscle does not fully relax between stimuli leading to smooth sustained contraction – temporal summation
Control of muscle force: type of motor unit recruited- types differ in force and fatigability
Motor units differ in their responses and myosin heavy chain subtypes,
tell me about
- type1
- type2A
- type2X
Motor units differ in their reponses and myosin heavy chain subtypes:
type1– slow twitch/oxidative /high myoglobin / darker red
type2A– intermediate
type2X- fast twitch /glycolytic/low myoglobin / pale
Control of muscle force: size prinicple in motor unit recruitment
Contorl of muscle force: progressive recruitment of motor units
Recruitment of parallel motor units in hand to produce increasing force – cf. spatial summation
Answer: 4
Summary- all direct control of muscle activity from alpha-motor neurons
- Without stimulus, muscle is relaxed- high membrane conductance and negative membrane potential (-70 to -90mV)
- Muscles stimulated to contract by cholinergic nicotinic (ACh) neuronal inputs at neuro-muscular junction (nmj) / end plate
- No direct inhibition of muscle – inhibition of motor neurones in spinal cord (glycinergic)
- Skeletal muscle force controlled by:
- rate of stimulation of motor units
- number of motor units stimulated
- properties of motor units stimulated
What do spinal reflexes involve?
Involve motor neurons and local circuit neurons