Human Spinal Motor Control

Human studies in the past three decades have provided us with an emerging understanding of how cortical and spinal networks collaborate to ensure the vast repertoire of human behaviors. Humans have direct cortical connections to spinal motoneurons, which bypass spinal interneurons and exert a direct (willful) muscle control with the aid of a context-dependent integration of somatosensory and visual information at cortical level. However, spinal networks also play an important role. Sensory feedback through spinal circuitries is integrated with central motor commands and contributes importantly to the muscle activity underlying voluntary movements. Regulation of spinal interneurons is used to switch between motor states such as locomotion (reciprocal innervation) and stance (coactivation pattern). Cortical regulation of presynaptic inhibition of sensory afferents may focus the central motor command by opening or closing sensory feedback pathways. In the future, human studies of spinal motor control, in close collaboration with animal studies on the molecular biology of the spinal cord, will continue to document the neural basis for human behavior.