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The Journal of Neuroscience, May 21, 2008, 28(21):5494-5503; doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0651-08.2008

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Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive
Action-Based Body Maps in the Spinal Cord Emerge from a Transitory Floating Organization

Marcus Granmo, ^* Per Petersson, ^* and Jens Schouenborg

Neuronano Research Center, Biomedical Center F10, Lund University, S-221 84 Lund, Sweden

Correspondence should be addressed to Marcus Granmo at the above address. Email: marcus.granmo{at}med.lu.se

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.

Key words: development; somatosensory; structural plasticity; sensorimotor; learning; activity dependent

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Received Feb. 13, 2008; revised April 1, 2008; accepted April 10, 2008.

Correspondence should be addressed to Marcus Granmo at the above address. Email: marcus.granmo{at}med.lu.se

This article has been cited by other articles:

				J. Li, S. M. Walker, M. Fitzgerald, and M. L. Baccei Activity-Dependent Modulation of Glutamatergic Signaling in the Developing Rat Dorsal Horn by Early Tissue Injury J Neurophysiol, October 1, 2009; 102(4): 2208 - 2219. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

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