Intracellular and extracellular recording, stimulation and dye-filling techniques will be used to examine the organization and activities of the postural interneurons that generate abdominal motor responses initiated by mechanical stimulation of a swimmeret appendage in the lobster abdomen. The experiments will examine how specific mechanosensory afferents excite and/or inhibit the postural interneurons that produce motor responses. Electrophysiological and morphological techniques will be used to characterize many of the swimmeret mechanoreceptors. The results will provide detailed information concerning how specific mechanoreceptors affect the activity of the postural interneurons to produce specific postural motor neuron responses.
