Sensory Feedback Can Coordinate the Swimming Activity of the Leech

Previous studies showed that sensory feedback from the body wall is important and sometimes critical for generating normal, robust swimming activity in leeches. In this paper, we evaluate the role of sensory feedback in intersegmental coordination using both behavioral and physiological measurements. We severed the ventral nerve cord of leeches in midbody and then made video and in situextracellular recordings from swimming animals. Our electrophysiological recordings unequivocally demonstrate that active intersegmental coordination occurs in leeches with severed nerve cords, refuting Schülter’s (1933) earlier conclusions that sensory feedback cannot coordinate swimming activity. Intersegmental coordination can in fact be achieved by sensory feedback alone, without the intersegmental interactions conveyed by the nerve cord.

• Publication year

  1999

• Venue

  Journal of Neuroscience

• Publication date

  1999-06-01

• Fields of study

  Biology, Medicine, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.19-11-04634.1999PMID 10341261PMCID PMC6782618
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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