The spinal cord of mammals is an extremely complex structure and serves a variety of important functions for controlling sensory input and motor output for the behaving animal. There are numerous neurotransmitters and modulators within the spinal cord of mammals and the knowledge of their interactions is crucial to our understanding of how the spinal cord works. Dr. David Jones is studying the interaction between two spinal (monoaminergic) transmitter systems, namely the norepinephrine and serotonergic systems. His major hypothesis is that the norepinephrine and serotonin systems coregulate each other in spinal cord providing for integration between normal circuitry of descending monoaminergic systems. The approach he uses to investigate the pharmacology of these systems is the spinal slice technique. This work is important since it should add to our building body of knowledge of spinal motor circuits and how they are regulated by combinations of neurotransmitters.
