Descending pathways in motor control.
By Roger N. Lemon. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 2008
1,542 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Each of the descending pathways involved in motor control has a number of anatomical, molecular, pharmacological, and neuroinformatic characteristics. They are differentially involved in motor control, a process that results from operations involving the entire motor network rather than from the brain commanding the spinal cord. A given pathway can have many functional roles. This review explores to what extent descending pathways are highly conserved across species and concludes that there are actually rather widespread species differences, for example, in the transmission of information from the corticospinal tract to upper limb motoneurons. The significance of direct, cortico-motoneuronal (CM) connections, which were discovered a little more than 50 years ago, is reassessed. I conclude that although these connections operate in parallel with other less direct linkages to motoneurons, CM influence is significant and may subserve some special functions including adaptive motor behaviors involving the distal extremities.
Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Neurology, Pathology and Forensic Medicine
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/9a9535bc142cebdd08a04d1fb1d854bea1dfd63c
Citations in the corpus
- Altered network connectivity and global efficiency in tourette syndrome: insights into sensorimotor integration (2025, unknown): “…(M1) is the principal cortical area for the execution of voluntary movements, especially fine motor control of the hand (Gerloff et al., 1998; Lemon, 2008), while the primary somatosensory cortex (S1) is essential for processing motor-related sensory input and feedback (Borich et al., 2015;…”
- Prefrontal Hierarchical Control of Corticomuscular Coherence in Stroke (2026, unknown): “The corticospinal tract (CST) provides the primary conduit for motor output from M1 to the periphery [38], serving as the structural substrate of CMC [15], [39].”