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Neuroscience in the 21st Century pp 1153–1188Cite as

Spinal Motoneurons

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Abstract

In a sense, motoneurons are arguably the most important class of neurons in the central nervous system (CNS) because without them, we could neither move nor breathe. Over a century ago, the great English physiologist, Sir Charles Sherrington, recognized that “… at the termination of every reflex arc we find a final neurone, the ultimate conductive link to an effector organ, gland or muscle.” Sherrington named these final neurons “motor neurons” (or motoneurons in most papers today) and called them “the final common path” that receives information from many sources both within and outside of the central nervous system, integrating this information and transmitting it to the muscle fibers that they innervate. Since Sherrington’s time, motoneurons have been extensively studied because of their critical role in the control of all movement in both invertebrate and vertebrate animals. In a real sense, motoneurons are one of only a very few categories of millions of neurons in the central nervous system (CNS) that have a clearly defined function – to cause activation of muscle fibers.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Laboratory of Neural Control, NINDS National Institutes of Health, 43 North Mesa Road, 1722, El Prado, NM, 97529, USA

    Robert Burke

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  1. Robert Burke
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Correspondence to Robert Burke .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory of Neurobiology and Behavior, The Rockefeller University, New York, New York, USA

    Donald W. Pfaff

  2. National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), National Institutes of Health (NIH), Rockville, Maryland, USA

    Nora D. Volkow

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Burke, R. (2016). Spinal Motoneurons. In: Pfaff, D., Volkow, N. (eds) Neuroscience in the 21st Century. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-3474-4_33

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