Temporal Patterning in a Small Rhythmic Neural Network

Abstract

Rhythmic motor patterns such as walking, flying, and chewing form a large part of the behavioral repertoire of most animals. It is now clear that the fundamental characteristics of such motor patterns (their rhythmicity and the sequence of movements that make up the pattern) result from the activity of relatively small neural networks that produce appropriately ordered motor outputs in the absence of timed input from either the periphery (e.g., proprioceptive inputs) or the rest of the nervous system (e.g., descending pathways) (Delcomyn, 1980). Over the last twenty years the mechanisms underlying the ability of these central pattern generator (CPG) networks to inherently produce ordered rhythmic motor outputs has been intensively studied, and a fairly deep understanding of this process has been achieved for several invertebrate model systems.