This investigation examined the crosstraining effect of swim training on middle distance running performance. Eight, healthy, untrained subjects (mean age + SD = 24.63 + 2.77 yrs) participated in a 12 week. swim training program. Before and immediately following the training period, measurements were made of: maximal oxygen consumption (V03 max.) (treadmill); anaerobic capacity (Wingate test); ...

Distinct rhythmic behaviors involving a common set of motoneurons and muscles can be generated by separate central nervous system (CNS) networks, a single network, or partly overlapping networks in invertebrates. Less is known for vertebrates. Simultaneous activation of two networks can reveal overlap or interactions between them. The turtle spinal cord contains networks that generate locomotio...

Escape swimming in the predatory sea slug Pleurobranchaea is a dominant behavior that overrides feeding, a behavioral switch caused by swim-induced inhibition of feeding command neurons. We have now found distinct roles for the different swim interneurons in acute suppression of feeding during the swim and in a longer-term stimulation of excitability in the feeding network. The identified patte...

OBJECTIVE This study aimed to assess and compare sperm motility, concentration, and morphology recovery rates, before and after processing through sperm washing followed by swim-up or discontinuous density gradient centrifugation in normospermic individuals. METHODS Fifty-eight semen samples were used in double intrauterine insemination procedures; 17 samples (group 1) were prepared with sper...

The physiological and anatomical properties of an unpaired intersegmental interneuron designated cell 205 are described. Cell 205 is unusual among leech neurons in that it combines a variety of functional properties in a single cell. Constant current depolarization of cell 205 initiates and maintains swimming behavior in semi-intact leeches or the swim motor pattern in brainless, isolated nerve...

Voluntary movements in animals are often episodic, with abrupt onset and termination. Elevated neuronal excitation is required to drive the neuronal circuits underlying such movements; however, the mechanisms that sustain this increased excitation are largely unknown. In the medicinal leech, an identified cascade of excitation has been traced from mechanosensory neurons to the swim oscillator c...