Walking is a complex mechanism involving both automatic processes and conscious control. Its dysfunction can have multiple, sometimes extremely subtle causes, within the motor cortex, brain stem, spinal cord, or muscles. At Paris Brain Institute, Martin Carbo-Tano, Mathilde Lapoix, and their colleagues in the “Spinal Sensory Signaling” team, led by Claire Wyart (Inserm), have focused on a specific component of locomotion: forward propulsion.

In a study published in Nature Neuroscience, they show that it involves a region classically called the mesencephalic locomotor region, which controls the vigor and speed of movement and transmits the nervous message to the spinal cord via control neurons located in the brainstem.

This new mapping carried out in zebrafish corroborates recent studies in mice. It could eventually be extended to humans—helping to understand how movement control circuits can malfunction, in Parkinson’s disease notably.

Just like a gecko that regrows a broken tail, our peripheral nervous system knows how to regenerate the branches of its cells after an injury. Unfortunately, the cells in our central nervous system—our brain and spinal cord—are far more limited when it comes to regeneration.

Accordingly, diseases that lead to the degeneration and death of brain neurons, such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and ALS, are irreversible and incurable. So, what is it about the peripheral nervous system, which connects our brain and spinal cord to the other organs, that gives it the power to regenerate itself so readily?

In a new study, researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science have discovered that a protein, previously known to be expressed only during embryonic development, plays a key role in regenerating adult neurons in the peripheral nervous system.

Following more than seven years of research, researchers at the University of Seville-IBiS (Institute of Biomedicine of Seville) have identified a new key cell type with a critical role in the developmental processes of memory and learning. This breakthrough has been published in the prestigious journal Nature Neuroscience.

The research, led jointly by the University of Seville-IBiS and Karolinska Institutet, helps to understand how neural systems with decisive functions for human behavior mature. The in-depth study highlights the role of microglia, a group of cells that has been the subject of substantial information in recent years due to its involvement in various brain pathologies such as Alzheimer’s disease.