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Neural circuits underlying jaw movements for the prey-catching behavior in frog: distribution of vestibular afferent terminals on motoneurons supplying the jaw

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Abstract

Coordinated movement of the jaw is essential for catching and swallowing the prey. The majority of the jaw muscles in frogs are supplied by the trigeminal motoneurons. We have previously described that the primary vestibular afferent fibers, conveying information about the movements of the head, established close appositions on the motoneurons of trigeminal nerve providing one of the morphological substrates of monosynaptic sensory modulation of prey-catching behavior in the frog. The aim of our study was to reveal the spatial distribution of vestibular close appositions on the somatodendritic compartments of the functionally different trigeminal motoneurons. In common water frogs, the vestibular and trigeminal nerves were simultaneously labeled with different fluorescent dyes and the possible direct contacts between vestibular afferents and trigeminal motoneurons were identified with the help of DSD2 attached to an Andor Zyla camera. In the rhombencephalon, an overlapping area was detected between the incoming vestibular afferents and trigeminal motoneurons along the whole extent of the trigeminal motor nucleus. The vestibular axon collaterals formed large numbers of close appositions with dorsomedial and ventrolateral dendrites of trigeminal motoneurons. The majority of direct contacts were located on proximal dendritic segments closer than 300 µm to the somata. The identified contacts were evenly distributed on rostral motoneurons innervating jaw-closing muscles and motoneurons supplying jaw-opening muscles and located in the caudal part of trigeminal nucleus. We suggest that the identified contacts between vestibular axon terminals and trigeminal motoneurons may constitute one of the morphological substrates of a very quick response detected in trigeminal motoneurons during head movements.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank Ms Timea Horvath for skillful technical assistance.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Anatomy, Histology and Embryology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Debrecen, Nagyerdei krt. 98, Debrecen, 4032, Hungary

    András Birinyi & Szilvia Kecskes

  2. Department of Pediatric Dentistry and Orthodontics, Faculty of Dentistry, University of Debrecen, Nagyerdei krt. 98, Debrecen, 4032, Hungary

    Nóra Rácz, Clara Matesz & Gabriella Kovalecz

  3. MTA-DE Neuroscience Research Group, University of Debrecen, Nagyerdei krt. 98, Debrecen, 4032, Hungary

    Clara Matesz

  4. Department of Oral Anatomy, Faculty of Dentistry, University of Debrecen, Nagyerdei krt. 98, Debrecen, 4032, Hungary

    Clara Matesz

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  1. András Birinyi
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  2. Nóra Rácz
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  4. Clara Matesz
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  5. Gabriella Kovalecz
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Correspondence to András Birinyi.

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This research was supported by financial aid from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MTA-TKI 11,008) and from the Hungarian National Research Found (OTKA K115471).

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Birinyi, A., Rácz, N., Kecskes, S. et al. Neural circuits underlying jaw movements for the prey-catching behavior in frog: distribution of vestibular afferent terminals on motoneurons supplying the jaw. Brain Struct Funct 223, 1683–1696 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00429-017-1581-1

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