This symposium on Neuronal Mechanisms of Central Pattern Generators will bring together distinguished neuroscientists to exchange recent results of their research and to discuss new directions that their research should follow. The symposium will be a day-long set of oral presentations at the 2011 Annual Meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (or SICB) in Salt Lake City, Utah. The SICB meeting is a major U.S. gathering for biologists from all branches of biological study, and symposia of this kind are a major activity there. Many activities that we take for granted, such as walking, chewing, and breathing, depend upon the functioning of specialized neural circuits in the brain and spinal cord. These neural circuits are known as Central Pattern Generators (or CPGs) because their activity forms the basic patterns from which rhythmic behaviors are derived. Similar neural circuits produce the rhythmic swimming of fish and the rhythmic wing-beats of flying birds and insects. Despite the deep importance of CPGs for animal life, there remain many unanswered questions about how nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord of vertebrates like ourselves (and in the nervous systems of invertebrate animals like insects, shrimp, and snails) work together to form rhythmic, regular patterns of activity. The invited speakers work on a wide range of animals, both vertebrate and invertebrate, because details gathered by analysis of a range of animals will yield insights that would not be found in the study of any single animal species. In addition, many invertebrate animals and cold-blooded vertebrates are easier to study at a detailed, cellular level. Basic research of this kind has broad impacts that include future treatments for spinal cord injuries and other motor impairments. For example, until the organization of the normal, functioning spinal CPG for walking is known, it will be difficult to develop a rational plan to repair the locomotor CPG when it has been damaged. A symposium offers participants an opportunity for more intense interaction than would otherwise occur. The public presentations of their research allow other biologists to join the discussion and contribute ideas. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the symposium will be attended by graduate students and researchers who are just beginning their careers, and who may be drawn to enter this vital area of research.
took place at the 2011 annual meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB) in Salt Lake City, Utah. The purpose of this symposium was to bring together researchers actively working on the cellular and synaptic mechanisms of neuronal circuits that generate rhythmic activity, in order to share their recent findings with each other and with the larger audience of neurobiology-interested registrants at the SICB meeting. Central pattern generators (or CPGs) are involved in many important behaviors in vertebrate and invertebrate animals. They are composed of synaptically connected neurons in the central nervous system that, when activated, produce rhythmic excitation of motor neurons. A distinguishing feature of these neuronal networks is that the basic motor rhythm can be produced in the absence of any sensory input. Examples include the rhythmic movement of limbs during walking or swimming in vertebrates, including humans. Respiratory movements such as lung ventilation are also driven by CPGs in vertebrates, and analogous movements that drive water across the gills of invertebrates are also driven by central pattern generators. Similarly, invertebrates have CPGs for locomotion, feeding (including ingestion, chewing, and gut processing ingested food), and other stereotyped behaviors. Because CPGs are involved in some of our most basic and important behaviors, there is a natural importance to understanding the physiological mechanisms that underlie CPG output. The 2011 symposium brought together ten highly qualified speakers, each of whom presented a 30-minute summary of recent results in his or her laboratory. This activity has great intellectual merit by encouraging integration of recent discoveries across the phylogenetic boundaries that separate vertebrates from invertebrates, and one invertebrate phylum from another. That is important because there is a tendency for vertebrate neurobiologists to focus mainly on vertebrate results, whereas the mechanisms that control CPG function are likely to be shared across phyla. Therefore the results and insights from the study of invertebrates can be applied to the study of vertebrates, and vice versa. It is anticipated that the presenters at the symposium gained significantly from the opportunity to hear about new findings from other laboratories, and that as a result they will develop new ideas for their own research, thus moving the entire field forward. The symposium resulted in publication of peer-reviewed manuscripts by seven of the ten presenters, and the seven manuscripts were published as a group in the journal Integrative & Comparative Biology. Those publications are an important product of the symposium and will be useful as a reference for research and education for many years to come. The symposium also had broader impacts in terms of professional training and education. Several of the presenters were at the assistant professor or post-doctoral trainee stage of their careers, so the opportunity and experience of making a symposium presentation at a national meeting was important for their career development. One of those at the post-doctoral stage is a female, and her presentation may stimulate other women in the audience to pursue this important area of research, in which women are still under-represented. In addition, the presentations all had an educational value for the many graduate students who attended the symposium, as well as having educational value for those in the audience who are themselves educators and can integrate and relay the new findings to students at their home institutions.
