The rhythmic pumping of the paired heart tubes in the medicinal leech Hirudo medicinalis offers an excellent system for studying the development of a simple behavior in terms of its neuronal and muscular components. The present experiments examined the development of identified heart excitor (HE) motor neurons during normal embryogenesis. Using intracellular impalements and dye-filling, we foun...

Rhythmic motor patterns are thought to arise through the cellular properties and synaptic interactions of neurons in central pattern generator (CPG) circuits. Yet, when examining the CPG underlying the rhythmic escape response of the opisthobranch mollusc, Tritonia diomedea, we found that the cycle period of the fictive swim motor pattern recorded from the isolated nervous system was not altere...

Recently, there has been increased focus on movement and sensory abnormalities in autism spectrum disorders (ASD). This has come from research demonstrating cortical and cerebellar differences in autism, with suggestion of early cerebellar dysfunction. As evidence for an extended profile of ASD grows, there are vast implications for treatment and therapy for individuals with autism. Persons wit...

Human rhythmic movements spontaneously entrain to external rhythmic stimuli. Such sensory-motor entrainment can attract movements to different tempi and enhance their efficiency, with potential clinical applications for motor rehabilitation. Here we investigate whether entrainment of self-paced rhythmic movements can be induced via transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS), which uses...

Today, modeling is critical for cognition and analysis of designers in industry field to meet their needs and design based on design requirements and available facilities to accelerate production and development of components of industrial engines. In this study, one structure has been proposed, designed, and analyzed based on turboshaft marine engine type to test this kind of engine in order t...

The networks that generate rhythmic motor patterns in invertebrates and vertebrates are ideal for studying the mechanisms by which functional circuits are formed during development. Rhythmic motor patterns and movements are seen embryonically, before they are needed for behavior; recent work suggests that activity in immature spinal cord networks is important for circuit formation and transmitt...

Results of a previous study demostrated transformation of the sustained activity of a muscle into rhythmic, tremor-like activity by stimulation of different motor centres. The optimum for this transformation was in the 4-7 Hz frequency band (resonance band). Sustained rhythmic stimulation with stimuli at 0.1-20 per second caused a normal frequency curve of the H reflex in subjects with intact m...

Many behavioral activities of the horseshoe crab Limulus are rhythmic, and most of these are produced in large part by central pattern generators within the CNS. The chain of opisthosomal (‘abdominal’) ganglia controls gill movements of ventilation and gill cleaning, and the prosomal ring of fused ganglia (brain and segmental ‘thoracic’ ganglia) controls generation of feeding and locomotor move...

Central pattern generator (CPG) is a kind of neural circuit which can be observed in many animals showing rhythmic patterns of actions. The CPG neural circuit can produce complex rhythmic patterns by receiving only simple signals from the brain. Generally, the CPG neural models can be applied to solve robotic problems, or to understand the underlying neural mechanism for rhythmic animal behavio...